


Thursday's Child

by paleogymnast



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate History, Alternate Universe, Character Death, End of the World, Gen, Multiverse, Saving the World, Temporary Character Death, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-08 22:20:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 69,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19876984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paleogymnast/pseuds/paleogymnast
Summary: At the end of all things, Claire Novak finds herself alone, when an unexpected entity offers her a choice—fade away with everything else across all the multiverse, or take a chance to save her sisters and forge new connections with a different version of her family, and maybe restore a future to at least one version of reality. But making the choice to go on will mean giving up everything she has ever known and loved, and traveling through time to a different world, a broken world lost in time, where she doesn’t exist, a teenaged Sam and 21-year-old Dean have been separated for years, and the Thule Society have infiltrated the mysteriously named “Department of Internal Services,” and history is not what she knows. The road will be long, but if she succeeds, Claire has a chance at saving the Alex and Patience she knows. If she fails, all existence will be erased.





	1. Chapter 1: With a Bang

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Art for Thursday's Child](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/500446) by Killa Beez. 



> For specific warnings and other contextual information, please see the notes at the *end* of the fic!

**Art by KillaBeez**

**Thursday’s Child**

_Monday’s child is fair of face,_  
_Tuesday’s child is full of grace,_  
_Wednesday’s child is full of woe,_  
_Thursday’s child has far to go,_  
_Friday’s child is loving and giving,_  
_Saturday’s child works hard for a living,_  
_But the child that is born on the Sabbath day_  
_Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay._

_~ Nursery Rhyme_

**Chapter 1: With a Bang**

“Claire!” Patience called from across the remains of Jody’s house, her voice barely audible over the cacophonous wind as more and more debris slammed into the walls, shattering glass, and sending what was left of the furniture flying.

But Claire could not respond, too shocked was she over the sight of Jody and Donna’s bodies strewn like broken dolls across the living room floor. Donna’s eyes were still open. Jody still reaching for her shot gun where it had fallen just out of reach. 

They’d lost. They’d lost _everyone_. Not five minutes had passed since she’d heard and seen the bunker explode taking Dean and Sam and Cas with it. They’d been on a video call. Anyone else who was there was dead. All their resources, knowledge, safety, gone—and there had been _something_ in the bunker when it exploded. She couldn’t be sure who or what it was, it was just a brief flash of a twisted shape, hulking, with wings, but not like any angel or demon she’d ever seen before. It reminded her of the kind of impossible horrors she’d seen in the Dark Place, the troll that had hunted them before… well, before Kaia had died for her, sacrificed herself—but she couldn’t be sure.

Now there were mushroom clouds rising across town, and everything was too loud and too bright, and—oh god, Jody was _dead_. And Claire was just standing there too slow, too stupid, and too useless and helpless to stop it.

“Claire!” Patience called again, her voice louder, but more frantic. There was an underlying current of desperation in Patience’s pleas that sent Claire scrambling. She tore her eyes away from her mom’s body and the body of the woman who was the closest thing she had to an aunt and vaulted over the collapsed beam that blocked her path. 

Another boom sounded, and the whole house shook. Something exploded nearby, and Claire was thrown to the ground. She could see a crack—there was a crack in the ground where she had been standing, a fissure separating her from Jody—the wall she was next to, collapsed, and then she was coughing plaster dust, and crawling, scrambling, to get away from the part of the roof that had caved in.

“Claire, please, hurry!” Patience shouted.

“I—” Claire coughed, covered her mouth, pulled her hand away, and found it bloody, “I’m coming,” she managed to croak a few seconds later.

The house was shaking constantly now, more of it collapsing, more cracks and fissures appearing all over the place. She stumbled into the hallway, following the sound of Patience’s voice. The howl of the wind was so loud now, she wasn’t sure she could hear Patience if she called out again. When she was almost to the kitchen, the ground lurched, and she found herself sliding down hill, under two falling support beams and through the doorway. She stopped when her legs struck the kitchen counter, and the room stopped sloping and shaking quite so much at more or less the same moment. Stunned, she flipped herself over onto her hands and knees and peered around the corner. 

“Help me get this off of her,” Patience said, her voice soft now, barely carrying above the din. 

_This_ , was a piece of the roof and ceiling that had fallen in, pinning Alex underneath it. She was still, unmoving, blood streaked down her face from a gash on her head. “Is she—” Claire couldn’t bring herself to ask, even as she stumbled across the rubble to join Patience in trying to shift the beams that were pinning Alex.

“She’s still alive. Hurt bad, but alive. An angel could save her, it might not be that bad,” Patience said, panting. She had grabbed a baseball bat—probably the one she’d taken to keeping in the coat closet—and was using it as a lever to try to lift the rubble. “Pull!” she commanded.

And Claire did as Patience said, grabbing Alex’s lifeless form under her armpits and hauling backwards. She wasn’t moving; it wasn’t moving; until suddenly Alex’s legs came free, and Claire stumbled backwards, cracking her back over a boulder-like piece of debris. It hurt like hell, and she bit her tongue, but she could still feel her legs, still move, and Alex was free, so… But what did it matter? “Cas is Dead. I saw him die on facetime,” she admitted. “There are no more angels left. There’s—”

But Patience was gripping her shoulder, squeezing tight, and staring into her eyes. “I had a vision. I saw a way we can survive. There’s a spell that will open a rift. I’m not sure where it will go, just that I can see you, and Alex, after it, and we’re okay. I don’t know how, but it works. I had just had the vision before all this started. I went to Jody’s safe, and got this,” she held up a small glass vial filled with a swirling white ether.

Archangel grace.

Claire froze. “How,” she murmured. She hadn’t known Jody had _archangel grace_ in the safe. Then again, it was Jody—and Jody was dead and… and… “But the spell, none of us is a witch, and most of the rift spells need tons of rare ingredients.”

Patience was shaking her head, “I saw it in the vision. Grace, a circle of sigils drawn from our blood. We’re all bleeding, the world is ending, it could be crazy or a demonic plot, but what the hell do we have to lose? I saw us there, after this, and we were okay. We have to try. Please help me try.”

Claire swallowed nodded. “What do you want me to do.”

The ritual or spell or whatever it was, was fairly simple. Seven sigils, some of them familiar Enochian forms, others she’d never seen before, brushed hastily into the exposed bits of ground in a circle around them, two runes each in each of their blood, the seventh sigil—an infinity symbol—drawn in the blood of all three. The house was falling down around them. The noise was so loud, Claire was pretty sure she’d gone deaf, and the light was so, so bright. But as she held Alex’s unconscious body to her chest, she could just make out faint words spoken in Patience’s voice. She could have sworn it sounded like a nursery rhyme, but she couldn’t be sure. Maybe Patience had lost it, but then again, what difference did it make. 

After what felt like hours, but was probably less than a minute, Patience opened the vial of archangel grace and poured it onto the infinity symbol. To Claire’s utter shock, the grace spread out over the symbol and began to glow an intense, pulsating blue. 

A crack like lightning sounded behind them, the air supercharged with electricity, the force of it so strong, it knocked Patience forward and into Claire and Alex. A rift appeared, not yellow-orange like the rifts they’d used in the past to move between world, but the same vivid, pulsating blue that the infinity symbol had turned. “Help me get Alex inside,” Patience said, scrambling to her feet. Patience backed up, carefully entering the rift. It parted to let her in. 

Hesitant, but aware of how much the world was falling down around them, Claire passed Alex’s unconscious form to Patience. As soon as Alex was inside Claire stepped forward to follow, but the rift snapped shut actively ejecting her, bouncing her back until she once again hit the pile of rubble, and then it was gone like it had never existed, taking her sisters with her.

“No!” Claire screamed shaking her fist. Then, dropping to her knees, “Nooooo!” she punched at the ground, but it was gone, the infinity symbol had vanished. It was the end of the world, and Claire was all alone in her broken home, dead bodies of her loved ones in the other room, and her sisters gone, vanished into the ether.

As the tears streamed down her face, Claire sat back on her heels and waited for it to all end.


	2. The Waters Beyond the End of Time

**Chapter 2: The Waters Beyond the End of Time**

The noise was too much to bear, she felt pressure in her head and her ears were bleeding. Everything was bright, then so, so, so white, blinding her to the final death throes of the planet earth.

It was the end, and she was all alone. 

When she was next aware, Claire found herself lying down on her back, floating in shallow water, but she wasn’t wet, and everything was the color of milk and snow, so white it was almost blue. But there was not a there where she was. It didn’t seem to be a physical place. She couldn’t feel air. She was ‘t sure if she was breathing. The milky water surrounding her had no temperature, and she couldn’t see or hear the explosions anymore.

Claire panted, unsure if she was alive or dead, and not sure if it was actually quiet, or if her ears had finally given out because of the sound was so intense. 

In her confusion, a voice spoke to her from the nothingness. Claire sat up, still seeming to float on the infinite milky, watery nothingness.

Before her stood a snake, perched on its tail and towering above her. She wasn’t sure what kind of snake it was, and it was the same intense, deep blue as the rift had been. As Claire tried to move back, the snake shifted, flowed, and in the blink of an eye, transformed into a beautiful woman of indeterminate age with deep olive skin, black hair, and dark eyes. She looked vaguely reminiscent of ancient Egyptian artwork, but unlike anything Claire had ever seen before.

“Who are you?” Claire asked after the silence had stretched on for what seemed like hours or maybe days.

“I have many names. Over infinity, I have come to represent many concepts to many peoples. In Greece I was Aion, in Rome Aeternitas, in Egypt Heu the god and Hauhet the goddess of infinity. I am eternal, infinite, the overseer of all that ever was, is, or could have been. I existed before time began and I will be here long after the end, which is now, unless you want to take me up on an offer.”

Claire blinked at the goddess, not quite processing what she was saying. “What should I call you?” she asked.

“Please use the name _you_ are most comfortable with,” came the goddess’s reply.

Hauhet, for that was the name Claire’s mind settled on, looked serene and peaceful, and Claire had a burning sense of urgency as she thought about all the time that had passed since her sisters went into that rift. 

_Good choice!_ Hauhet said. Only she didn’t speak, the words just appeared in Claire’s mind. 

“What do you mean, this is the end, unless I take you up on an offer?”  
“The multiverse is dying,” Hauhet began, and she explained how it was happening. All the worlds were blinking out, caught up in the maelstrom, soon to be nothing. Patience’s portal did not work, at least not the way she thought it would, because there was no other world to escape to, but Patience and Alex were not necessarily lost, not yet. They were suspended in a bubble of spacetime, and there was a way they might be saved, but in order to do so, Claire would have to give up everything she has ever known with no chance of getting it back. 

At that point in the explanation, Claire stopped Hauhet, and asked, “Wait, wasn’t God also older than time? And didn’t Dean Winchester kill Chronos? So, if the god of time is dead, how do you still exist?”

Hauhet just blinked very slowly, showing no offense. “I am what came before and what will be after. The Egyptians envisioned me as an unformed ocean, but more accurately, I am nothing and everything all at once. While I do not normally engage in the mortal worlds, or have a vested interest in creation, reality, over time and the long expanse before, I have come to enjoy the company of other beings, and I see the value in existence. I do not wish to see it all end. Here and in every universe. 

“But how? I mean, I know something bad happened on my world. There was an explosion at the bunker, some kind of demon, maybe, and I can see how something the Winchesters were handling could lead to the end of the world, but how does that affect other worlds, dimensions, universes?”

Hauhet told Claire about Hauhet’s power, as the only being left in existence, she could see within the reality of it all, the past, the future, what was, what could never be, and the why of it all. 

As Hauhet spoke, Claire looked around, and realized she could see it. They were waging war against a cosmic entity, they had crossed and crisscrossed universes swapping with duplicates and blending histories, all while God—the creator of this existence this entire universe—was absent, and the forces were out of balance. It wasn’t any one thing, but the culmination of a million billion deals and trades and compromises, forces working against each other, Dean and Sam and Cas—and also her family and others—trying to win the day for the humans and their allies while keeping themselves alive. Somewhere in there too many deals and spells and broken impossibilities spilled over and reality broke and unraveled. Those were the magical nukes she had experienced before the end, the initial blast a spell backfiring, and everything after it the backlash of an overbalanced universe finally coming apart as the deals broke and the seams of spacetime split apart. Only the blast wasn’t limited to her world, it took with it all of the other universes and realities they had touched, linked, and interacted with—heaven, hell, purgatory, and the fairy realm within their own universe; the Apocalypse world (or what was left of it); and the Dark Place. Only it wasn’t just the versions of Earth in those universes or her own that had flown apart, it was the entire universe, every galaxy, star, planet, comet, and infinitesimal speck of space dust, wiped out. And because many other universes were similar to one another, and similar to the universe Claire had come from, with their own versions of God and their own Sams and Deans and Castiels, trying to shift the balance, there were enough other universes out there where their version of Dean and Sam and Cas or whomever had taken their place, had reached a similar point and had a spell backfire that started a chain reaction that took out everything. And those universes were all cross-linked with other universes because of travel through rifts and seams and portals, and altogether too many versions of reality hit the same cataclysmic misstep at the same time until the collective destruction was enough to wipe out all of existence. Every version of existence, time, space, and reality, gone. Where they “stood” now, they were watching the last vestiges of existence being washed away.

Claire looked around. The milky ocean was almost flat, smooth, there were so few bumps and ripples left. How had so much gone away so quickly. A terrifying thought flashed through the maelstrom of emotion in her mind, “How long have I been here?” she asked.

Hauhet gave her a funny expression. “It’s so strange to think about time, when it has almost ceased to exist. It has been both a millisecond and a couple of million millennia since you arrive here. As time no longer exists, it cannot pass. But if time did still exist, the time that would have elapsed since you came here would already have been far longer than the entirety of your life from birth until the end of the world.”

Claire blinked. Blinked again. She’d been here, decades? The wounds of seeing her family dead, losing her sisters, the rift slamming shut, were still so fresh and raw, how could it be _decades_? She certainly didn’t feel any older.

And if all that destruction had already happened, then how could Claire save her sisters? How was there any hope for any reality?

Hauhet spoke again, answering Claire’s unvoiced question. “There is one world, a lost and desperate world, where much has—or rather _had_ —already gone wrong. But because of what was done to it, it is the one world, the only world, that could still be saved. And with it, maybe others can return into being. 

“In that world, the Thule Society and the British Men of Letters took a bigger advantage of the power and supervision vacuum that resulted from Abaddon’s obliteration of the American chapters of the Men of Letters. And because both organizations were fond of time travel, temporal manipulations, and magic, they managed to spread their influence and war far earlier than the calendar cate on which the American Men of Letters actually imploded. Both organizations had a decades-long clandestine war in which they each tried to bring about or eliminate different prophecies and apocalypses, resorting to increasingly more dangerous time travel, magic, and magical engineering. In the end, two competing projects interacted in a particularly destructive manner. The entire universe became unmoored in time and space, free floating on the cosmic fabric of the multiverse. But as a result, that universe was isolated, insulated, no longer synced up with any other universe, unable to touch or be touched by any outside forces. While all worlds are ending in the present, our present isn’t the present for that drifting universe. The universe simply was not _there_ for the cataclysm that befell every other reality. The shockwaves that undid existence could not reach that world.

“The lost world, though, is an unusual and dangerous place. The damage wrought to the world was so extensive that time travel, by any means is no longer possible. The universe’s futures and pasts are not necessarily connected with each other anymore, as the cause and effect of a lot of time travel and other magic has essentially folded in on itself, collapsing like an accordion. You see there are some effects in place as if the preceding events had already happened or as if time has moved to a later date for those events, but the events that precipitated themselves did not happen, and the intervening years did not take place. 

“For example, in that universe, Dean Winchester is a barely more than a teenager, but the light and the darkness—or Chuck and Amara, as I believe you know them—have already left Earth to travel the farther reaches of the universe, even though Dean hasn’t lived any of the life yet that would have led to him having the Mark of Cain, getting the Mark removed, or releasing Amara from her prison. And because Amara is already free and touring the universe with her brother, there is no longer a prison from which to release her, or any way for Dean to get the Mark in the future.

“The results of time travel that happened in the past from our perspective are even more garbled, because when the Thule and British Men of Letters broke the universe, they did so by various actions across various points in time, but yet simultaneously. By warping spacetime in that way, they destroyed the idea of past and future or even the concept of what the “present” was in terms of time travel. So events that had not yet happened and could not happen, like Sam and Dean being adults in the future and traveling back in time to tell Samuel Colt to kill a phoenix with the Colt and save the ashes has happened, even though one end of the timeline no longer exists or and never existed. Abaddon and Henry Winchester still stepped into a time portal that sought out Henry’s relatives, but by the time the portal would have opened and connected with his grandsons, time travel was already broken, to their portal, in effect, never opened, and they both just vanished from existence. 

“But you see, this one, strange, universe holds the possibility of saving all of existence. Because the universe is adrift, it is possible to travel from where we are to various times within that universe, even though the construct of time has been rewritten. We just have to wait for that world to come around again,” Hauhet explained.

At long last, she took a break, almost as if she was waiting. Curious, Claire asked, “What’s the big catch?”  
It turned out, there were a few. Claire could not go to any time when the version of Claire in that world was alive. And if Claire went to that world, she would be taking up permanent residence, so she must go either before she was born (and then that would mean altering things so her birth did not take place), or after she died, which fortunately or unfortunately from Claire’s point of view happened in early 1998 in the lost reality. 

“But that’s not the _real_ catch,” Claire protested. 

“You are very wise,” Hauhet said with a sort of smug smile that did nothing to put Claire at ease. “There are two options. You can stay here, in your world and fade away as everything in the universe disappears. Or, you can take a chance and travel through time and across realities to the one world where hope still lives. But there’s a price. I can send you there, but once there, there is no coming back. And as long as that universe is unstuck, you won’t be able to travel through time or use rifts to travel to different realities… Until and unless the world itself is stabilized and reattached to its rightful place in the leftover impressions of spacetime. If the universe does get reattached to its rightful place, it can take root and bring other realities back into existence. But in order to fuel that one-way trip, I will have to use the energy of a dying reality. _This_ reality. I need that to open the rift. So, if you succeed, there will be no way to ever bring back your version of reality. The Sam, Dean, Cas, Jody, and Donna you knew and loved are all permanently erased.”

“So why would I help?”

“Because if you succeed.” Hauhet explained, “and you moor the drifting universe into place, you will create a world, for all of us, that had a future. And it can bring other universes back to life. You would both give that world a future going forward, and you would be able to open the portal Patience took Alex into. It will like they’ve been in stasis, and no time will have passed.

And with that Claire knew she couldn’t say ‘no,’ not to a plan that could save her sisters.

“Then yes!” Claire exclaimed. “Absolutely yes. If I have a chance to save Patience and Alex, I’m going to take it.” 

Hauhet fixed her with her most penetrating stare yet. “Are you absolutely certain, because if you say ‘yes, the one world I cannot save is your own.”

“But there’s no way to save it anyway. It’s either oblivion and everything, everywhere ceases to exist, or this world goes, but at least I get to live and my sisters with me,” Claire exclaimed. 

“If you are certain then,” Hauhet gestured to the side. “I have means to give you hope. While your world is already destroyed, I can, reconstitute, shall we say, important relics, mementos, even memories of those you’ve lost and those who came before you. Information, journals, tools, weapons, the very items you will need to complete your mission, I can give to you, so you can take them with you. Come now, let us prepare.”


	3. Smoke and Shadows

**Chapter 3: Smoke and Shadows**

_May 1, 2000, Universe 1997A52φ_

Claire Novak was born on November 6, 1997, a Thursday.

Of course, she’d never bothered to look that up, and for much of her life that detail had been lost in a sea of grief and change. She could vaguely remember her mother, Amelia, reciting the old nursery rhyme. She’d asked what it meant, having “far to go,” looking back, she couldn’t remember what Amelia had said. For so many years, Claire had alternated between trying to hold onto memories of her parents with both hands and shoving any thought or reminder of Jimmy and Amelia into a box, burying it, and throwing away the key. Now that she would like to remember, that recollection was long gone. Looking back, given the angel who’d eventually assumed her father’s body, and for whom she had once—briefly—served as vessel, it was fitting. 

Hauhet had reminded her. Of course, now, standing next to a familiar, maroon 1990 Subaru Loyale that looked no worse for wear considering the last time she’d seen it bad been hurtling sideways through the neighbor’s house while mushroom clouds rose over Sioux Falls, she was starting to wonder if “far to go,” meant literal distance. It hadn’t sounded too bad when Hauhet or Infinity or whatever she—they?—wanted to call theirself, said the only place she could let Claire into the drifting world was through Centralia, Pennsylvania. 

Centralia was infamous in the hunter community. In addition to having the longest burning underground coal fire, the cloud of toxic smoke that blanketed the old mine served as a sort of attractive nuisance for supernatural beings. She’d been once, chasing a werewolf, and hand run into two other hunters while she was there—one trying to rout out a nest of ghouls and the other hunting something that turned out to be some strange hybrid of a ghost dog and a hell hound (Claire never got the story on what it was supposed to be). Her werewolf had run afoul of the ghouls, as had the hunter hunting them, and after a particularly nauseating foray into an old, smoke-filled mine shaft, she’d dispatched the ghoul who’d assumed the werewolf’s identity and vowed never to set foot in that godforsaken cesspit again.

Centralia, the town, was perfectly nice, of course, for a ghost town, and the township around it was nice too, if sparsely populated. But it the overall lack of people made it a bad place to run into trouble with nary a gas station, hospital, or even vet clinic to be found. It was also very disconcerting to be in the area, and not just because Centralia itself was akin to a real-time example of one of those post-apocalyptic nature taking over the skyscrapers documentaries that always seemed to show up on motel cable at 2 in the morning. Worse, everyone around there was used to living next to a scientific oddity and had adopted a degree of learned obliviousness regarding the supernatural goings on that made hunting there extra creepy and extra dangerous. 

On the other hand, Centralia was only about 140 miles from the boys’ home where Dean lived in this universe, and by Claire’s estimation it would only take about 3 hours to get there, less if she flaunted the speed limit. Or at least that was what she expected.

Landing in Centralia in this unfamiliar world was, unsettling to say the least. The smoke hung thick in the air, blanketing everything and mixed with a dense, impenetrable fog. While she could see her car and about 5 feet around it, everything beyond that—even the sky—was masked from view. It was late afternoon when she arrived, and the sun—wherever it was assuming there was a sky beyond the smoke and fog—was dipping low in the sky, orange and pink shafts shining through unseen green trees to cast everything in an eerie greenish orange glow so that it appeared the entire world around her was lit with a magical fire.

There was no sound, not even the distant rumble of burning coal. No cars. No people. No animal life of any kind. If she hadn’t been told where she would land, she would not have known where she was, and to be honest, she wasn’t quite sure she believed it.

“You’re lucky,” Hauhet had said, “of all the changes in this drifting universe, the law affecting your GPS satellites,” and that had sounded positively bizarre coming from entity who was both snake and woman and frog and tree and water and man and eternity personified, “happened at about the same time. So, if you get one of those devices it will show you where to go. You won’t have one of course, when you get there, so look for my signal to show you the way.” 

Claire had no clue what sort of signal she was looking for, and had a moment of blind panic, turning around abruptly to see the rift closing behind her, the white, milky nothingness of the rest of spacetime disappearing from view, as the sparking, deep blue slit closed and sputtered out of existence. 

She was well and truly alone. Her world, her entire universe—Jody, Donna, Sam, Dean, Cas—all gone forever. Irretrievable.

_If you’d stayed, you would have been gone too,_ a voice that sounded remarkably like Kaia whispered from the depths of her mind. The familiarity of it, the longing for someone else, long gone now, but always missed, comforted her. Kaia’s death had changed her, made her grateful, made her accept who she was, given her a fire and motivation and drive to make things right, to avenge her would-be love. She hadn’t gotten over it, watching Kaia sacrifice herself for Claire, seeing the light go out of her eyes, but she had moved beyond it. It gave her hope.

Hope that she could move beyond the loss of her entire world? Maybe. She didn’t feel that brave, not yet. But that voice in her head gave her the strength to take a deep breath—

And immediately regret that because, well, toxic coal fire, world emulating the deepest circles of hell—

Coughing, she looked up and looked around. A sign. There had to be a sign. Was it a literal sign? Like a street sign? Hauhet wouldn’t have sent her here doomed to fail immediately. At least, she had to believe that was the case.

Something shifted against her wrist. No that wasn’t quite right, a part of her wrist felt like it was moving, something in her skin _spinning_ , tugging her towards the car. She looked down and saw the deep blue infinity symbol tattooed on her wrist shifting in the diffuse light. One of Hauhet’s “boons” to help her on her journey, it was both magic and ink, a solid infinity symbol in the same deep blue of Hauhet’s rifts, the color of her snake, and yet at the same time, the solid symbol was made from myriad sigils, characters, symbols, runes and letters. And right now, some of the runes and symbols that made up its intricate and magical structure were more prominent, and the entire elongated figure eight seemed to be moving in a particular direction. Pointing.

“Okay, if you say so,” she said aloud, her voice barely audible, words swallowed up in the misty void around her. She stepped towards her car, put her hand on the roof and leaned into it—something solid, a memory of home, a piece of herself. The metal was neither warm nor cold as incongruous as her surroundings. Before getting in, she decided to give the car a once over, walking around it, slowly. It was _her_ car, somehow. Even though she’d seen it destroyed not long before the rest of her world was obliterated. But there was the scratch on the rear passenger side fender, the ding in the end of the hood where a vampire’s head had bounced off the car in a recent hunt. She hadn’t had time to fix it yet, had planned to ask Dean to give it some TLC whenever the boys next swung by Sioux Falls or she was next in Kansas. But it hadn’t happened. Now, it never would.

Tears sprung to her eyes so fast the accompanying sob took her by surprise. The grief was fresh and new and washed over her with the force of a tsunami threatening to drown her. The tires were new, fully inflated, because Jody—Jody had insisted that she keep herself safe, threatened her with a moving violation if she didn’t replace the near-bald, too-patched spare that had been resident on the front passenger side since it had been slashed by a peculiarly suburban wendigo three months before. 

_You’ll never see her again. She’s gone. Donna’s gone. They’re all—_ Claire couldn’t even finish the thought. She was seeing their bodies again, broken, bloody, lifeless. The flash and bang on the phone’s screen before the call to Dean went dead, and cell reception with it. The grotesque after-image of some sort of mangled demonic angel like thing, burned into her retinas and her phone screen… she’d seen the bunker destroyed, known they were all dead… Patience calling for her, Alex bleeding, watching Patience drag Alex’s unconscious form into the rift only for it to close on them too fast for Claire to react—

_You can still save your sisters._ This time it was Hauhet’s voice that came to her, gave her focus. Right. She could save her sisters, somehow, from the rift to nowhere they’d stepped into, but only if she saved everyone else in this universe first. Her fingers found their way unconsciously to the vial of archangel grace that now hung around her neck, tucked under her shirt and secured on a And the clock was ticking. Hauhet had said, because of the “orbit” of the Drifting universe, she would arrive only about 12 hours before the angels tried to grab Dean. What sounded like plenty of time, now seemed way too little. How long had it been since she’d stepped through the rift? 5 minutes? 10? 20? Her sense of time seemed to have vanished along with every other identifiable feature of this place.

She completed her circuit of the car, noting her stuff—or rather a neater, cleaner, better-organized version of what she usually carried, but all items she or her family had in their possession at one time or another, was in the back seat. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the keys Hauhet had placed there and unlocked the hatch back to take a better look. The contents took her breath away. Hauhet had explained she had “adjusted the parameters of space” to ensure everything would fit. (Claire was pretty sure that was another word for ‘undetectable extension charm,’ and somehow she’d been sent to a parallel universe by a deity who was a Harry Potter fan. There was a box, for lack of a better term that took up 2/3 of the space behind the back seat, it was some sort of dull metal she didn’t recognize. The lid was warm to the touch and opened smoothly when she pressed her hand against it. She didn’t know if it locked or if it was keyed to only respond to her.

Claire lifted the lid. Row after row of hunters’ journals—hers, Jody’s Donna’s, Alex’s, even the book she vaguely recognized as Patience’s diary, were all there. Other journals she recognized—Sam’s, Dean’s, _Cas’s_ \--while still others belonged to long-gone hunters she’d heard about and recognized the names on them as she lifted each one free of the storage case—John Winchester, Rufus Turner, Mary Winchester, Bobby Singer, Asa Fox, _Jack Kline_. Each of these people, the versions of them she’d known anyway, now permanently erased from existence, but their knowledge, wisdom, thoughts, preserved for her. As she lifted some of the journals out, she realized there were others layered below, the journals stretching down two or three layers deep depending on the size of the books in question. She dug deeper and kept reading the names—Charlie Bradbury, Lilly Sunder, Samuel Colt, Samuel Campbell, James Murphy, Kevin Tran, Donatello Redfield, Daniel Elkins, Cole Trenton, Annie Hawkins, Garth Fitzgerald IV, Jo Harvelle, Ellen Harvelle, Bill Harvelle, the names went on and on… These weren’t just _hunters’_ journals, she realized but research papers and diaries of profits, memoirs, and weapons diagrams. She shivered. Alongside the journals and related documents, was a complete copy of the “Supernatural” books by Carver Edlund. Which she now knew were actually the _Winchester Gospels_ , Carver Edlund being a pen name for Chuck Shirley, which was the assumed identity of _God_. There were a few larger tomes she didn’t look at too closely, but she was pretty sure were grimoires or spell books, and if she wasn’t mistaken, the _Book of the Damned_ and the _Black Grimoire_ were among the volumes. It was an impossible, priceless collection, somehow crammed into a too-tiny space in the back of her station wagon, suspended somehow without crushing each other, each labeled neatly to identify it.

The remaining third of the hatch back was filled with another nondescript metal box, this one looking more like a trunk of some variety. It had a more conventional latch and clasp, and she got the sense others could open it. Inside were weapons—crossbows, machetes, two shotguns, an AR-15, a variety of small pistols including two 9 mms and a .45, a flame thrower, hex bags, a dream catcher, containers of salt, goofer dust, other common spell ingredients, a flask of holy oil, a consecrated iron crowbar, a dozen flash bangs, and box after box after box of ammo—each one labeled by the type and caliber of bullet. There was also a katana with a blue-tinged blade and Enochian lettering inlaid in the hilt, and next to it, an angel blade. Her fingers moved reflexively seeking out the familiar weight and neutral feel of the angel blade. She realized now, the temperature properties of the metal were almost the same as those found in both trunks, only the blade was shiny, reflecting filtered rays of the setting sun, while the trunks had a matte finish. She wondered then, if the strange containers were made of some sort of related element. And not for the first time, she wondered how an entity that wasn’t exactly a _being_ that existed before time, life, and everything, had managed to _make_ or recreate her car matched so perfectly to how it had been, yet utterly changed by the strange and impossible contents of these two chests. 

Claire tucked the angel blade into the sleeve sewn into the inside of her jacket and closed the box holding the books feeling the lid give a satisfying “snick” that suggested it was locked. Then she closed the weapons trunk, latched it, and regarded the back of her vehicle skeptically. Hauhet had warned this world was not like her world, the spell or accident or whatever had sent an entire universe hurtling off into nothingness, so that it was somehow floating around in an irregular orbit through the remains of what used to be spacetime, had also collapsed cause and effect, scrambled the time line, and allowed for all sorts of anachronisms to exist. Until she had a better sense of what this place was like, she wasn’t taking any chances. 

With a lingering sigh, she followed the tugging of the tattoo on her wrist and sat in the driver’s seat. Assuming she had stepped through the portal half an hour ago, it would take her another three hours to reach Dean. By then it would be true night, even in May, with the days five or six weeks from their longest point, and not the greatest time to introduce herself to a wary strangers, especially with a deadline looming overhead.

~~~

As Hauhet had promised, a gentle tugging sensation in the magical tattoo guided Claire out of the desolate smoke and onto I-81. The rift had deposited Claire in the old cemetery, which in this universe was positively enveloped in smoke for almost two miles around. She could see vents and cracks in the ground with smoke billowing out of them. Something had happened here that had made the fire much more exposed, and possibly more intense than it was on her world.

Once on the road, she’d made good time for the first 50 miles or so, but eventually had to stop to use the bathroom and get food. Considering it had been something like decades since she’d last eaten, she was pretty hungry.

She took a detour into Wilkes Barre and made a beeline for the nearest McDonalds. She hadn’t had time to get herself time appropriate cash, credit cards, or ID, so she decided to chance it with the cash that was in her wallet figuring no one would look too closely on the series date of a bunch of grubby, crumpled $1.00 bills. Once she got over how frigging cheap the food was, she asked for directions to an electronics store, and received directions to a Radio Shak. 

Now she was at a loss. While she had more cash, it probably wasn’t enough to buy what she needed, which was whatever the newest, most advanced cell phone she could find and a GPS unit for the car. Those items would be _more_ expensive, not less than they cost in 2021, and even if she had enough cash, she was pretty sure the design of the $20.00 bill had changed _a lot_ since in the past 21 years. Frustrated, she ran her hands through her hair and slammed her fists on the steering wheel. _Damnit_. She could probably make her way to Hurleyville with a map, but the idea of being cut off if she got lost, with an angelic attack on the horizon did not inspire confidence. As she let go of the steering wheel, her left hand brushed her right wrist, and she froze.

_Memories._ She was bigger, tall, laughing as she looked on at her children—Sam and Dean—with affection as they shared a rare peaceful moment watching Saturday morning cartoons in front of the motel TV. Not her memory then. John Winchester’s? Hauhet had said she had gifted Claire with the memory and knowledge she would need to navigate the past and understand the present and future, and that the memories would come to her when needed. If she was honest with herself, she’d had a vague notion of this being something like someone using a pensive in _Harry Potter_ , maybe sitting and watching a 3-D, immersive rendering of someone else’s recollections. The reality was far weirder. Now that she understood what was going on, she was _remembering_ what had happened, only she was aware the memory was John Winchester’s and had taken place sometime years before she was born. 

Her universe’s John Winchester had kept a storage cache in Wilkes Barre. It wasn’t one of his giant storage lockers, but an emergency stash hidden in the dropped ceiling of an ill-used gas station bathroom at on the other side of town. Assuming _this_ universe’s John had followed more or less the same habits and paranoia, there might be a cache there right now. Only from what Hauhet had said, this universe’s John had died, a little over five years ago. He’d been vaguely in the area at the time, but even assuming he had checked on or replenished the stash right before he died, would it still be there? Would there be anything useful or useable? 

Well… considering the alternative was trying to take a five-fingered discount on what amounted to cutting-edge tech for the time, in a strange universe, in a time she didn’t remember in her own universe, with a looming deadline, some chance sounded better than certain arrest, or worse. After all, she’d had the memory, it must mean _something_.

Half an hour later, she pulled up to a derelict-looking Gas ‘n Sip, its paint cracked and peeling, the company logo an older version she didn’t recognize and wasn’t sure had ever existed in her reality. Inside, the store was empty save for a faded, older woman with long white hair gathered into a low, messy pony tail, wearing an equally faded blue uniform vest, her name pin crooked and illegible. Claire asked to use the bathroom and was met with skepticism bordering on outright suspicion. 

“There are nicer bathrooms around, sweetheart,” the clerk responded.

Claire put on her best, “appeasing the civilians,” smile—although given how wrung out and exhausted she was now feeling, it might have come across as “crazed” more than “reassuring”—and said, “I just really can’t wait. Any bathroom is better than nothing, right now.”

The woman scowled at her again, then passed her a small key attached to a large wooden paddle. “It’s just the one bathroom, go past the ice maker down the hall and it’s in back across from the storeroom.”

“Thank you so much,” Claire replied. 

Once inside, she locked the door, or tried too—the door had a separate slider you could lock independent from the lock in the doorknob, but it didn’t quite seem to catch. The bathroom was disgusting, much like the clerk had suggested. There was mold and mildew in along all the calking on the sink and counter and every tile on the floor, rust and more mildew around the central floor drain, with an unidentified greenish-black substance clogging 50% of the drain itself. The toilet bowl was yellowed with age and constantly running. There was no lid, and the seat was cracked. The smell of stale urine, vomit, and cigarette smoke, clung to every surface and permeated the air. A thick, congealed pool of orangey urine and who knew what else was filling the gap left by a missing tile in front of the toilet. There was shit on the walls (and possibly the ceiling, although that could have just been water damage), and she had honestly been around decaying corpses left behind by ghouls that were cleaner and smelled better. 

Swallowing an involuntary flow of bile, she braced herself and climbed up onto the broken toilet seat. The toilet rocked ominously, its bolts squeaking and groaning as the toilet slid around on the floor, a whiff of sewer gasses suggesting the plumbing left a lot to be desired. Bracing herself with one finger against the least-vile part of the wall, she stood on tiptoe, until she could reach the brown-stained acoustic tile and pop it out of position.

A cloud of dust, dead bugs, and various and sundry grime, shook loose from the ceiling as she nudged the tile, then shifted it up, and in. Shifting her weight to one foot, and transferring her grip to the framework around the tile, she reached up with her other hand to feel around inside the ceiling. Greasy, dusty, occasionally slimy, she touched something that was probably a dead rat, and dislodged another large cloud of the crumbly grey grime, before her fingers closed on something that felt like a heavy-duty plastic bag. She tried to pull it out, lost her balance, and stepped into the toilet bowl, cringing at both the sudden dampness of her right foot and the loud, splash it made. She managed to steady herself without crashing into the revoltingly dirty wall and returned to her precarious perch on one toe. Claire shimmied her foot along the toilet seat until the tips of her toes were hanging over the back, and reached up again. _Almost… Almost… There!_ Her fingers closed on the corner of the bag and she pulled. The bag moved and then stuck, then unstuck rapidly causing her balance to wobble precariously. The bag finally slid out of the ceiling and hit her in the forehead with a dull smack, and she hopped off the toilet, landing a lot louder than she would have liked, feet straddling the pool of congealed piss at the toilet’s front. 

Blinking, she looked down at the bag that was dangling from her hands. It looked _promising_ the bag had once been a clear Ziplock-type storage bag but was now grey brown with dirt, grime, and whatever had leaked in from the Gas ‘n Sip’s roof. But Claire could make out the outlines of a few sizeable stacks of bills, something that might have been a passport or other id, and some other items. Before she could take closer look, the doorknob rattled, and the door behind her opened with a long, low creak.

Heart falling to her stomach, Claire turned, left hand raised, right hand clutching the stash, and came face to face with the barrel of a pump action shotgun.

_Ca-clink!_ The gas station attendant pumped a round into the chamber. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, girl.” She gestured toward the bag with the barrel of the gun, but being a shotgun, it was still aimed at Claire. “That belongs to John Winchester, and you’re sure as hell not John Winchester.”

“John Winchester’s dead,” Claire blurted despite herself. It was true, that was one of the details Hauhet had been able to confirm for her to aid her on her way. He’d been killed on a hunt in April 1995, just days after whatever the Thule and the BMOL had done had sent this universe spiraling off into nothingness.

The gas station attendant straightened up, “That don’t mean you can help yourself to his property.” She gestured again with the shotgun, but Claire stood up straighter and lowered her hands, shifting the grip on the bag so it wasn’t dangling so precariously, and sneaking a look at it.

She looked the attendant in the eye. The woman didn’t feel like an angel, and yes, that was something Claire admitted she had been able to sense for years, even if she hadn’t been willing to admit it. Now, though, there was something else behind the pattern recognition and familiarity, a sense of certainty supported by the way the infinity symbol on her right wrist was _not_ reacting. Time to roll the dice. Claire took a chance. “John Winchester’s sons are in danger. Sam and Dean need help, and I need the contents of this bag if I’m going to help them.” She paused, considered the woman for another moment, and added, “Christo.” Yeah, it was stupid, but on the off chance this person was a demon, well, at least that would give her a heads up.

The woman rolled her eyes, but they didn’t flash back. “You’re a hunter, and a damn fool, stupid, green, amateur at that.”

“No, I’m not,” Claire protested, realizing she sounded defensive, and probably a bit ridiculous. What did she care what this person thought of her? She just needed the contents of John Winchester’s not-so-secret secret go-bag so she could avoid an arrest for grand larceny in the next hour or two. “I mean, yes, I am a hunter, but no, I’m not an amateur, I’m just not from around here. And I need this bag, and I’m on a very tight timetable, so unless you want to doom John’s sons, you’ll let me go.”

The woman’s expression became, if possible, even more skeptical and contemptuous. “Not from around here, what are you then, an alien?”

“Not exactly,” Claire admitted, “I’m from the future.”

The woman lowered the shotgun. “Well, shit, you’re serious, aren’t you?”

Fifteen minutes after that, after Claire had given herself the best sink bath possible in a bathroom covered in shit and mildew with only powdered soap and lukewarm water and even crappier water pressure, Claire was on her way. The woman, whose name was, coincidentally, also Claire, had helped Claire transfer the contents of the bag to a clean bag, and Claire had thanked her, and purchased three different kinds of baby wipes and four bottles of water, which she had used in tandem to try to rinse and scrub off her face, hands, hair, and jacket. She wound up changing her shirt, and finally felt a little more human. The other Claire gave her a complementary cup of coffee, and sent Claire on her way with request that she “look out for those poor boys, will ya?”

Hauhet’s explanation of the memories seemed to be accurate. The bag contained a little over $5,000 in cash, three passport blanks, four credit cards, a safety deposit box key, and a note addressed to Dean with information about local hunter who could set him up with ID and other documents in a pinch.

Claire headed back to the Radio Shak, and forked over almost 1/3 of the money for the fanciest pay-as-you-go phone she could find, a Motorola RAZR, realizing both the phone design and features and the prepaid option were both anachronistic for the date—May 1, 2000, by the date on the newspaper, the day before Sam’s 17th Birthday—and a Garmin GPS that was definitely too modern by 2000 standards, but clunky by comparison to what Claire was used to.

Satisfied she wasn’t going to get completely lost in the middle of nowhere, Claire went in search of a FedEx Office, got a few very strange looks before realizing she was actually looking for a Kinkos, and got some passport photos taken. Luckily one of the three blanks, “Taylor Kocher,” had a fairly androgynous name and a birth date not too far off what Claire’s would have to be to be as old as she was now had she been born in the drifting world. The expiration date was also, mercifully, 5 years off, which suggested John had updated the stash shortly before his death.

Claire then drove to the northern end of town and found the camera shop mentioned in John’s letter. Luckily, it was still there, and after she showed the proprietor, Walt, John’s letter, the shop closed a little early (they were usually open ‘til 9:00 p.m.) and she was escorted to the back room with the blinds drawn. It was relatively easy to get her new snapshot added to the Passport blank—at least some of the technology was still appropriate to the time period—but a little bit harder to get her a driver’s license. 

“You need something that will stand up to DIS scrutiny,” Walt said, “You never know when you’re going to run into one of their checkpoints, or god forbid, find yourself adjacent to some sort of terrorist activity.” 

Claire wasn’t sure wat “DIS” was, but the mention of “terrorist activity,” reminded her of something Hauhet had said, “Supernatural forces battle in the open, but even the people of that beleaguered Earth won’t admit what is happening, so they blame it on terrorists, and treat their people with suspicion.”

In the end, Walt made her two driver’s licenses, one from New York with the same name and birthdate as listed on her shiny new-old passport. The second was from South Dakota, Claire’s nostalgic choice, and carried the closest thing to her real identity as she dared—Claire Novak, born November 6, 1977. Her name, her birth day, just with the year adjusted for time travel.

By the time she was on her way, another two hours had passed, and it was 9:00 p.m. and she was still almost 2 hours from Hurleyville. It was dark, she’d be arriving around 11, and the angels were apparently going to be ready to begin their assault as early as 3:00 a.m. That didn’t really give her much time to play with, especially if Dean or any of the people he lived with were particularly skeptical of her statements. 

Part of her wondered if she’d made a mistake. Maybe she should have chanced it, not bothered with the phone or GPS, or lifted it, or even just booked it as soon as she had the damn GPS and not bothered with the IDs, but something about the way Walt had talked about DIS and roadblocks made her gut twinge, and she knew enough about her instincts, even without the new bells and whistles Hauhet had provided, to trust she had made the right choice.


	4. Chapter 4: Old Friends and (not so) New Enemies

**Chapter 4: Old Friends and (not so) New Enemies**

Claire arrived at Sonny’s farm a little before 10:00 p.m. She had flouted the speed limit as much as she dared and shaved nearly an hour off her projected arrival time. When she arrived at the address, only confident she had the right place because of the hazy memories of Dean Hauhet had transferred to her, she pulled into the end of the driveway and turned off the engine. She sat there, letting the seconds stretch into minutes, listening to the ticking of the Loyale’s engine as it cooled. She wasn’t sure what she had expected. Up until this moment she had been working to the clock, tackling one problem after the other, jumping on what came next, but now—

Seeing Dean, this Dean with the impossibly different history, would be the nail in the coffin. The undeniable, irrefutable proof her old life was gone, her universe irretrievable. Up until this point, she could still pass it all off as a really bad dream, maybe a twisted fantasy created by a particularly vindictive D’Jinn. But she knew the moment she saw Dean reality would come crashing in, and Claire wasn’t entirely sure she could suck it up and press on. After all, she’d lost her entire world, her family, everything she’d ever known, and she’d never really had time to grieve. 

A tugging sensation in Hauhet’s mark on her wrist prompted her to get moving. Like it or not, she was on a clock, and if she fucked up any one of these interceptions, that was it. All of reality was done, over, no going back. Better not fuck it up right out of the gate.

Claire made her way up the long driveway, gravel crunching under her shoes. It took forever. It took no time at all. Before she registered crossing the distance, her hand was raised, poised over the door knocker.

There was a bell. She pressed it. Once. Twice. The faint chimes echoing in the distance. She waited. The door knocker was always there if no one came.

Seconds ticked by. It was late. It was probably pretty unusual to get a visitor this late. Her story was going to seem particularly unbelievable. If she was lucky, they’d call the cops on her, maybe see about having her committed. This was a terrible idea. How had Hauhet possibly thought this was going to work?

Maybe she really shouldn’t have taken the extra time to get supplies. 

Claire looked at the bell again, faint orange glow emanating from behind clouded, yellowed plastic. It was innocuous, yet she regarded it as if it were a serpent poised to strike. Should she press it again? Her finger hovered.

Distant footsteps echoed faintly through the door. They were coming closer, and quickly, so she waited.

The door rattled, curtain over the small window fluttering, before the distinct sound of a deadbolt turning cut through the silence of the night. The door swung inwards, opening a crack, a backlit face appearing in the five-or-so-inch gap between door jam and the door.

“Can I help you?”

She knew him immediately, even though she hadn’t known him at this age, or even seen a picture.

“Dean Winchester, you’re in danger.”

“Excuse me?” Dean was surprised. There was a hint of the familiar sarcasm the Dean she knew had thrown around as his first line of defense, but it was different, muted. More genuinely amused, and yet, haunted somehow. This Dean was softer than the Dean in her universe at the same age, of that she was pretty sure. He didn’t give off the vibe of a coiled predator lying in wait, nor a casual sex god looking for his next hookup. There was something almost relaxed and, daresay, wholesome about him. He was thinner, more middle-distance runner with a side helping of honest-to-god manual labor, less finely honed combat asset with side-helping of survivalist prepper. The calluses she could make out on his fingers were from chopping wood, operating farm equipment, and repairing cars, not handling guns, digging graves, and well, repairing cars.

There was a grease stain on his cuff, a black smudge stark against the faint ribbed oatmeal knit of his Henley. At least somethings stayed the same.

“You’re Dean Winchester, son of John and Mary, older brother of Sam. Born January 24, 1979. Your mother died in a house fire when you were four and a half. Your dad always said she was pinned to the ceiling, bleeding. He became a hunter. You traveled all over the country with him as a kid, always on the move, saving people, hunting things, the family business. You made a family on the road. Other hunters. Other people in the know—Pastor Jim Murphy, Bobby Singer—sometimes you stayed with them. Other times your dad took you with him. He taught you to hunt—salt and iron to keep away vengeful spirits, salting and burning bones to send the ghosts on their way, holy water for demons, silver bullets for werewolves. You learned gun safety by the time you were five. You could shoot cans off a fence from 20 yards away by the time you were six. He taught you how to hunt. He taught you lore and mythology. You learned how to take care of Sammy, how to cook and clean, and keep John from falling apart, because you were all you had, holding the family together. And you were good at it. 

“And then one day, when you were sixteen you were trying to shoplift some food because you and Sammy were hungry. John hadn’t left you enough money, and you couldn’t wait another day listening to your brother’s stomach rumbling. But this time, you got distracted, ‘cause you were hungry and tired, and you got caught. They took you to county lockup, called your dad, and John—well he told them to let you rot, because he was pissed you got caught. At least, that’s the reason he told to outsiders.

“You came here, and you started helping out Sonny. You met a girl, had some dates, competed in wrestling, discovered you were really good, you even went to prom. Only that April, right around the same time as prom, some really fucked up shit started happening in the world. There were mysterious EMP blasts, terrorist attacks. The cellphone networks shut down, so did half the power grid, mass transit, airlines, busses, trains. And by the time you got past that initial shock, you realized you hadn’t heard from your dad, even though you’d expected to. You confided in Sonny. He hadn’t heard anything either. You searched and searched, and then you found it, an article that confirmed your dad was dead, murdered by something supernatural. You never found out what happened to Sammy.”

“Don’t you dare speak my brother’s name,” Dean shot back.

“I’m here to help you, Dean, I can find Sam, reunite you, but I need you to help me, to listen and trust, because there’s something very, very bad coming for you tonight.”

“Oh yeah, what?” He asked, voice full of false vibrato.

“Demons, and angels. A whole lot of both of them.”

~~~

Almost two hours later, after she’d been invited in, met Sonny, gone through tests with holy water, silver, Christo, and a couple of tests she was pretty sure Dean had made up on the spot, Dean wasn’t talking to her—apparently he thought the high-def brain download was some kind of elaborate trick—and she was no closer to getting the boys’ home in a defensible position.

“Don’t take it personally,” a voice said from the doorway behind her.

Claire whirled around to find Sonny leaning against the door jamb. She turned back to the window and leaned against the glass, feeling the cool night air seep through where her bare right forearm was pressed against the glass. This wasn’t going well, but there was still time. There was no sign of either angels or demons yet. If she had to, she could ward the entire house herself, buy them some time, and try the whole “the truth is out there” speech again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next, for however long it took.

“You gotta cut him some slack. The boy—man—has a stubborn streak as wide and deep as the ocean and he’s been hung up on trying to be normal since he got here. I’ve tried to ease him out of it, get him to accept himself the way he accepts everyone else, but he’s twisted up inside, his dad—”

“Was a homophobic dick?” Claire offered, cringing at the bitterness that had crept into her voice. 

“Among other things,” Sonny agreed, stepping into the bedroom and taking a seat on the end of the bed nearest the door. “I’m pretty sure it was you saying Dean’s part angel or whatever, that set him off.”

“It’s not actually part angel. That would be a nephilim, which is different, and a whole lot more rare and differently complicated. He’s an archangel vessel, which is still supernatural, and uncommon, but not directly angelic,” Claire felt the need to clarify.

Sonny just chuckled. “It’s still something not 100% human and—”

“John always hated that,” Claire finished. 

“That’s what I’ve surmised,” Sonny agreed. 

“Of course, the ironic thing, is John didn’t know he was a vessel, he didn’t even realize angels exist, because they wiped the memory from his mind, back before Dean was born. John actually served as a vessel for an archangel, briefly. I gotta wonder how John would have reacted if he’d known...” she trailed off. “Of course, the fact John didn’t know about angels isn’t helping my credibility any,” she sighed, gearing up to make another plea.

“Give him time, he’ll come around,” Sonny answered.

Claire turned fully away from the window now, facing Sonny, arms crossed defensively across her chest unable to hide her surprise. “You believe me.”

Sonny shrugged, leaning back against the nearest footboard post. “I’ll admit I thought Dean was delusional or crazy the first time he told me about what his dad hunted. Then two months later, there’s bombs going off with no bomb, wiping out every trace of technology in the area, sightings of people fighting with smoke and silvery blades, new technology that works like magic, reports of bodies exsanguinated, all the sorts of things Dean talked about. And his father turns up murdered, brother gone, and Dean’s version of the truth is a lot more believable than the bullshit they’re peddling as the official story.”

Claire nodded, a sickening realization dawning in her, “And John dying, while Dean was here, he blamed himself—still blames himself—for that. Blames it on his not being normal enough good enough.”

“Well,” Sonny hedged, “I’m pretty sure he was here because his dad was pissed he got caught stealing...” 

It was a test. “You know he was only stealing ‘cause John was pissed he was turning tricks, since his, well, Johns, were men and John had already caught him with a boy once.”

“And Dean was distracted by the fit of the stock boy’s jeans when he got caught shoplifting. Yeah, I got the full story out of him about three weeks after his dad died,” Sonny finished. “You really are from the future, aren’t you?”

“A different universe’s future, but yeah, this world is pretty close to mine in terms of what has happened, what would have happened if some idiots hadn’t broken time.” At the mention of,time being broken, Hauhet’s mark throbbed on her wrist, she squeezed and rubbed at in response, wondering if the tattoo was reacting to an external threat, or responding to her own pain. 

“So, what do you need from me to make sure this place is safe?” Sonny asked. 

Clair’s smile grew, “You have any rock salt?”

~~~

Of course, Claire hadn’t been counting on Dean or Sonny to have the supplies they’d need. She’d brought what she could, or rather Hauhet had included extensive supplies when she’d reconstructed the Loyale in this universe. But Claire could honestly use all the help she could get. Sonny’s farm was huge. There were tons of little kids running around, and she hoped to secure the place in such a way that neither angels nor demons would want to come back any time soon without giving the more human-adjacent factions reason to be interested. She couldn’t tell and Hauhet hadn’t known, if either the Thule or the British Men of Letters were aware of Dean’s location or significance. It was entirely plausible, especially with their limited and twisted view on reality, that they didn’t understand Dean’s importance. He’d been getting underestimated for over 40 years in her universe, after all, and neither the Thule nor the Brits were exactly known for open-mindedness or exceptional facility with nuance. Sam was the obvious target. Obviously part demon, tantalizingly Lucifer’s true vessel. Dean was much more human-seeming and easy to overlook, if he wasn’t an intrinsic part of your plans.

And you were unobservant. 

And a bigot.

But that pretty much described the Thule and the Brits to a tee. 

So, Claire retrieved her supplies from the Loyale and met Sonny in the Foyer. It was after midnight now, so they were short on time and trying not to wake the kids. 

Rock salt, salt guns, a bag of anti-possession amulets, spray paint, her angel blade, two gallon jugs of holy water, a rosary, three copies of the Key of Solomon, a book of Enochian runes and sigils, four tire irons, sidewalk chalk, two tattoo guns with ink and disinfectants, and a flask of holy oil. Oh, and an ordinary bowie knife for collecting any blood samples necessary for powering wards, so she wasn’t slicing open people’s palms with a frigging angel blade. She looked down at the haul that had taken her three trips to bring in from the Loyale, which was—thankfully—parked close to the house now, and wondered if it would possibly be enough. They were awfully low on weapons. 

Sonny came around the corner, accompanied by Dean, both of them carrying 40-pound bags of rock salt. 

Claire raised an eyebrow.

“This part of New York gets a fair amount of ice and snow. We use it for salting the driveways and the entry to the barn,” Sonny explained. 

“Glad you have some left over in May,” she said with a nod. 

“Seriously?” Dean asked skeptically, his voice high and tinged with offense and some conflicted anger. “You’re actually listening to this crazy chick?”

“You know about the supernatural. You know demons are real—”

“I never met one,” Dean protested.

Claire scrunched up her face in concentration. “Possibly not knowingly, but you’ve heard other hunters talk about them. And you didn’t doubt they existed before today.”

“Angels aren’t real!” Dean protested. “My mom prayed to them and they never helped. There’s no secret society of magic using supernatural experts, and my dad certainly didn’t come from people like that. He was a normal guy. A marine. Son of a mechanic. He had nothing to do with any of this until something killed my mom. And she sure as hell wasn’t a hunter, and I’m not—” he broke off, finger pointing at Claire threateningly. “I’m not taking orders from some inhum—”

“Inhuman freak? Like me?” Claire answered, the tattoo on her wrist shimmering and writhing in the foyer’s dim light.

Dean flinched. 

“I hate to—” she started, thought better of it, and took a deep breath. “I know John was biased against the supernatural, and he had very understandable reasons for feeling that way, but his bias and internalized phobias don’t change reality. No one in your immediate family, and certainly no one in your direct ancestry was a baseline human.”

“See I don’t believe you. I can cross salt lines and say Christo and use silver and do everything a normal human can. My dad was—”

“Your dad was an archangel vessel from a long line of archangel vessels and the Winchester side of his family had been magic users and researchers, part of the Men of Letters going back generations. Unfortunately, your grandfather died in the course of saving this universe from the wrath of a high order Demon, a knight of hell named Abbadon, so your dad was raised as the stepson of a mechanic and didn’t know about the world. Your mom was also an archangel vessel and came from a long line of hunters. She wanted to leave hunting, particularly after a prince of hell, named Azazel murdered her parents and killed your father. She made a deal to bring your dad back, and that deal inadvertently led to her death later on, but she was a hunter and she continued to hunt after you were born. She saved people, little kids even, and at least one of them grew up to be a hunter. But she wanted to protect you all from this world, so she never told you or your dad what she knew.

“I can show you, Dean, I can show you journals, your Journal, your dad’s, your mom’s, your brother’s, from my world. But some of that is stuff you don’t want or need to know because it hasn’t happened yet, and some of it can’t ever happen because of changes that have already been made to this world. You deserve to have a blank slate, an open future, bit I can’t give that to you, or anyone, if you fight me on this.

“Angels are coming, and demons too. They want to manipulate you, force you to start the apocalypse, and they’re willing to hurt, kill, or damn anyone who gets in their way, especially if that hurts you.”

“Even the angels?” Dean asked.

“As you’ve told me many times, angels are dicks. Sometimes we’re lucky and one’s on our side, but most of the time they’re greed, bitchy, self-important egomaniacs who hate humans and see them as inferior. And since they need people like us to achieve their goals on earth, in the mortal realms, they’re extra dickish to us,” Claire explained. “I’d love to take the time to explain, but they’re coming and they’re coming soon, so we need to act fast. If you help me, I’ll be grateful, but I won’t let you put all of reality in jeopardy because you’re too stubborn to trust me.”

Dean stood there, defiance melting into confusion, and finally, agreement. He exchanged a glance with Sonny. 

Sonny answered, “What do you need?”

“Well, to start with, salt lines at every door, window, crack or crevice or any other place something could get in,” Claire answered. 

“That will help keep angels out?” Dean asked skeptically. 

“No,” Claire confirmed, shaking her head. “To deter angels, we need warding.” She held up two cans of spray paint. “I hate to ask you to tag your own house, but so I’ll ask you to direct us to locations that will be less conspicuous, and I’ve tried to pick pain colors that will blend in, but we have to lay a complex network of overlapping sigils.”

“What are we drawing?” Sonny asked, eyeing the spray paint warily.

“These,” she said, exchanging the spray paint for the Enochian runes, and opening the book to face Dean and Sonny.

Dean blinked at the page and looked closer. “What the hell language is that?” he asked, then added, “Sorry, Sonny.”

“That’s Enochian, language of the angels,” Claire confirmed.

“And we’re just supposed to write this on the walls?” Sonny asked, sounding skeptical.

“Specific runes in specific patterns. We cover the outside of the house, the barn. We can mark trees and the stone wall along the property line, and if we have time, you’ll probably want to mark vehicles and farm equipment,” she admitted. 

“And that will, what?” Dean asked.

“Well, the warding scheme I’m planning will keep a lot of angels out, and it will make it very uncomfortable for the rest to even get close. We’ll put more punitive wards on the house, so they would have to physically break them down to get in. And just in case anyone is strong enough, stupid enough, and determined enough to do that, we’ll set up a surprise that will send them all far, far away,” Claire explained, a smile spreading across her face.

“Oh yeah, and what’s gonna do that?” Dean asked, sarcastically.

She flipped to the correct page and held up the image. “A banishing sigil.”

“What’s the catch?” Dean asked. “There has to be a catch or you’d just be banishing everyone. Drawing that thing everywhere. So why aren’t you?”

Claire’s smile grew bigger. “I knew I liked you,” she mused. “This is a blood ward. It has to be drawn in blood and activated with blood. Once it’s activated it goes off, and then it’s inert. You don’t need a lot of blood, but the bigger it is, the larger the range, both in terms of area covered and distance banished. You draw one of these. If you activate it, it will throw every angel and their vessel some distance away. We’re talking hundreds or thousands of miles and potentially every angel in the property gets evicted. Of course, in this day and age, angels all have wings and they can fly back pretty fast. So you want to throw them farther and harder, make sure they get disoriented, sapped of energy. Also, since they’re one offs, you don’t want to waste them, and you have to physically touch them with blood on your hand to activate them, so there’s an inherent risk of getting the timing wrong or not being able to get to them in time.”

“How the he’ll do you know this stuff?” Dean asked, and this time, Sonny didn’t call him on his language.

“This?” Claire asked, gesturing with the book, I’ve been doing it since I was eight? Nine? Angel warding is second nature.”

Dean still looked skeptical, and the death grip he had on his own elbows was equal parts defensive and terrified. “So is that all? We’re just supposed to what, keep bleeding and sending angels away, hope demons don’t get in?”

“No, but we’re going to need everyone you trust to take this seriously if we’re going to get it done.” She nodded at Sonny, “You believe me, or at least you’re willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. How about the other adults, older boys? Can you trust them? Mind waking them up, because the more ground we can cover, faster, the better this is going to go.”

Sonny seemed stunned for a moment, then nodded. “What do you need?”

“Honestly? If you’ve got anyone who knows Latin, or would be a quick study on pronunciation, I’ve got a half dozen speedy and effective exorcisms they can start practicing. If you’ve got a cell—” she cut herself off, cursing the state of modern technology. “Any kind of recording device and decent speakers we can even record an exorcism, play it on loop.” Maybe, if they had a CD burner or a computer with good audio programs, were MP3s a thing? Claire realized she was woefully vague on what technology had been like at this time in her universe. She couldn’t hazard a guess what might be readily available or affordable here. “If you’ve got kids good at drawing, any grafitti artists, taggers, we could use their help. We’ve got devil’s traps to draw on ceilings and floors and sigils to get on the walls ASAP.” 

Sonny nodded, “We’ve got some kids who fit the bill.” He turned to Dean, “Will you go gather the adults, I don’t think they’re sleeping with a visitor here, wake up Billy and Joe and all the kids over 15, and get Dylan and Javier, oh and Kyle, I know he’s only seven, but the kid’s a menace with a can of spray paint.” 

Dean looked at Sonny like he’d grown another head. Claire could see the battle playing out in his eyes, his distrust and anger at Claire warring with his trust of Sonny and years of obedience, a desire to please, a respect that made him want to give Sonny the benefit of the doubt even if he thought Claire was full of shit “Okay, Sonny,” Dean said at last.

Also,” she picked up the bag of anti-possession amulets, “before you go, everyone, and I mean everyone, needs one of these,” she shook the bag. “If you run out, I have more in the car, but I mean everyone needs one. I don’t care if they’re sleeping or insist they don’t need one, everyone gets one, or we’re all at risk.”

Dean took the bag from her and regarded the amulets with suspicion. “What are these?”

“Anti-possession amulets,” Claire responded. “As long as those are on you, it’s physically impossible for a demon to possess you.”

Dean’s brow scrunched up, “I thought demons were attracted to people who had something wrong, like a serious vulnerability or something?”

“Sure, under normal circumstances where a demon crawls out of he’ll and is just going about its business, sure, they’ll go for easy pickings, but those vulnerabilities, include fear, anxiety, hell even sleep deprivation. And these aren’t normal circumstances, these demons will be coming en masse, and on a mission, and a demon can damn well force itself down anyone’s throat if it needs to. We want to make sure the only hosts they find are whatever meatsuits they come here riding.”

“Meatsuits?” Dean murmured.

“No, I don’t think of humans that way, but they do, and you need to keep that in mind.”

Dean nodded, the first hints of consideration and maybe curiosity glimmering in his eyes. “What about angels?”

“Angels can only possess vessels, and only if the vessel consents. When they’re not facing extinction or the stress of being evicted from heaven, angels can tell who’s a vessel and who’s not.” It was Claire’s turn to scowl in concentration. With all the things that had been messed up and broken, were they looking at a scenario in which angels had been de-winged and kicked out of heaven? Or maybe where heaven was just closed? She thought through what she knew about this strange new world, and what had been happening out there. No, if there had been a massive fall, a lockout, or anything along those lines there would be more disappearances, stories of people exploding, people acting strangely... it was possible, but Claire had to think she would have seen a sign, and Hauhet would have said something. “As far as I can tell, this isn’t a situation where the angels are that desperate. Trying to occupy a human who isn’t a vessel causes the human to explode, and can hurt the angel. Most importantly, Angels need consent. They have to ask you and you have to say ‘yes.’“

“Ask you?” Sonny asked.

“If You hear a voice in your head, get a vision and someone says they’re a messenger from god, say ‘no.’“ As sick realization dawned on her, and she closed her eyes against the rush of terror and memory that rushed through her. “Shit.” She took two more heaving breaths. “Sorry,” she added looking up to meet both their eyes. “You’ll have to excuse me for being an idiot, but angels are—were—an endangered species where I come from. It’s been a long time since I’ve faced them at full- strength.

“Angels need permission to take a vessel, but there’s pretty much nothing they won’t do to force a ‘yes’ out of someone. They’ll give you hallucinations pretend to be dead loved ones; they’ll injure you, so your only options are to say ‘yes’ or die. They’ll trick a little kid, use their faith in angels as the good guys, tell them they can save their dying father, they’ll do anything to get permission. It doesn’t have to be willing, and it certainly doesn’t have to be knowing.” She looked from Dean to Sonny and back again. “I’ve gotta check everyone, figure out if there are any other vessels. If there are, we’ll have to give them extra protection, buddy up, extra warding, holy oil barrier, anything to make them unappealing.”

Sonny nodded, “Dean, can you take her with you, check out the kids?”

“Yeah,” he agreed, swallowing hard.

“Is there anything I can do while you, uh?” Sonny asked, gesturing at the stairs.

“Dean showed you how to lay salt lines?” she asked rhetorically, because of course he had. “Door, window crack, and a line around the entire interior. You get done with that while we’re still upstairs, start laying rings inside each room. She leaned over and picked up a copy of the Key of Solomon, flipped to the most basic devil’s trap. “Start drawing this underneath every rug, on the ceiling. These trap demons.”

Sonny nodded.

“After you,” Claire said to Dean pointing up the stairs.

She followed him from room to room, helping loop the amulets over each sleeping kid. A couple kids were still awake or woke to the sound of the door opening. Dean exchanged murmured greetings with them, tried to get the kids to go back to sleep. Watching him, Claire realized she was getting a glimpse of how Dean might have been with Sam when they were kids, when Dean was raising him. And this Dean, without Sam, he’d found a way to bring himself some peace. She could see it in the care and concern that echoed in every movement, every time he tucked a kid in or convinced them to go back to sleep, he was trying to give them safety, a sense of home he’d never had, never known. 

In the fourth bedroom, they came across the first vessel. Dean was talking to one of the slightly older kids in the room, Kyle, she surmised, the seven-year-old who was some sort of tagging or graffiti genius. Kyle wasn’t a vessel, but one of the other little boys in the room, who looked to be about 5 or 6, was. “Ah, crap,” Claire sighed to herself. “Dean,” she said, keeping her voice quiet. 

“Yeah,” he asked turning his attention from a groggy looking Kyle who was rubbing his eyes and looking more confused than excited.

“This kid’s a vessel,” she responded without prelude.

“Jimmy?” Dean asked, patting Kyle on the shoulder and crossing the room with near silent steps. “Are you sure?”

“Oh yeah,” Claire said. 

“Would they really, I mean he just turned 5 last month, what are they going to do with a little kid? I mean they’re angels...”

Claire smiled, but it was a tight, sad smile, “I wasten, maybe eleven, and my dad had been a host for a year. His body was so badly damaged in one of their fights, he was dying, and the angel wanted a new host, so he asked me. Asked if I wanted to save my dad. If I said yes, he would help me. So, I said yes, ‘cause I was a kid, and my dad was bleeding to death in front of me. And then the angel used me to heal my dad and kill some demons, until my dad begged the angel to take him back, so his daughter could have a life, because watching his little girl kill was tearing him up inside.” She fixed Dean with a glare. “That’s what angels will do to a little kid. And if they think you won’t say yes to save yourself, they’ll gladly harm someone you care about and make you watch until you say yes.” 

“You’re serious,” Dean realized breaking eye contact and flushing. 

“Everything I’ve told you is the truth,” she confirmed. 

Dean nodded and his blush spread. She wasn’t sure if it was embarrassment, shame, or something else. “Okay, so how do we protect him?”

Claire let out a long low breath. “Wake him up, buddy him up with someone he trusts, make sure that person is clear that if he hears anything, sees anything, dreams about someone who says they’re an angel, don’t listen, tell an adult immediately, and just say ‘no.’“

“That work any better for angels than it does on drugs?” he asked.

“Nope,” Claire said. “Our best chance is making this place as angel proof, or at least angel inhospitable as possible. So, we’d better checking the kids and get back to that.”

“But you said there’s a banishment spell or sigil or whatever, right? If an angel gets in, we can send them away?” Dean sounded wary, almost lost, the earlier snark and swagger and anger had bled a way, leaving terror and uncertainty in its wake.

“Banishment sends away the vessel along with the angel. It’s not an eviction like with an exorcism. Once an angel gets permission, it’s really damn hard to get them to leave if they’re not willing.” She lifted Jimmy’s head slightly off the pillow so she could settle the amulet around his neck. “I’d rather not send a five-year-old off to who knows where with a bunch of angel dicks if we can help it.”

“Okay,” Dean agreed, then nodded hard, “Okay, we’ll wake up Ramon. Jimmy likes him, and Ramon trusts me. He’ll listen to me even if he doesn’t quite understand what’s going on.”

“Great,” Claire said, setting the still-sleeping Jimmy back against his pillow. She watched as Dean got up, and walked to the door, tapping Kyle’s foot on the way by, as the groggy kid wiped his eyes and went about getting out of bed. 

Hand on the doorknob Dean stopped and wiped his hands over his face. His back was still to Claire, but she could just about make out the muttered “Jesus,” whispered out of fear, incredulity.

“Dean,” she said, rising to stand behind him. “You know the whole ‘just say no’ thing applies to you too. They’ll come at you, they may taunt you with information on your dad, on Sam, some of it may be true, some not, they’re going to say whatever they think will get you to do what they want. They’ll threaten you in one breath, and in the next tell you how important you are, because you’re the Michael Sword, the one true vessel for an Archangel who can turn the tide of battle, they’ll bring up your mom, tell you you’re a failure, and then say everything will be okay, if only you say yes.”

He turned to look at her, glancing over his shoulder with unshed tears in his eyes. “How is that—”

“Angels hate humans. They want you to start the apocalypse. They have to send you to hell first, unless the temporal shenanigans have given them away around that, so demons and angels both are probably going to try to get you to make a deal, trade your soul and life for someone else’s. Whatever you do, don’t. I don’t care if they’re promising to resurrect both your parents while forcing you to murder Sam with your bare hands.”

Dean made a choked sound and looked positively stricken. The weird juxtaposition, the role reversal, seeing Dean this young was messing with Claire’s head.

She took Dean’s left hand, the one that wasn’t gripping the doorknob like a lifeline, in both of hers and squeezed. “Whatever it is, the answer is ‘no.’“

“What if,” Dean began, voice catching, “Wh-what if it’s a truth, not a lie?”

“Doesn’t matter. There are ways around or through almost everything. Maybe reality will suck, but there are always options, but not if you say ‘yes.’ You’re the only one who can control your free will, and if you give in, they will use you, break you, to get what they want. Remember angels hate humans., most angels anyway. And demons follow an angel, and it’s one big ugly family feud. They want earth, they want the physical, mortal dimension, and you’re the one thing that stands in their way. Only they don’t realize if they win, especially if they win now, they will permanently erase all of reality from existence. You don’t give them the satisfaction, and I’ll do everything I can to keep you alive.”

Dean turned his hand in hers and squeezed back. She could tell he believed her, now. He still looked wild around the eyes, and frankly, that was probably only going to get worse, but she could see the moment the last shred of doubt left him. Dean shuddered, and his entire body sagged, leaning into the door for support. A single tear rolled down his cheek and he sniffed. “Okay,” he murmured, then more strongly, “let’s do this.”

Claire squeezed his hand and followed him out of the room. 

They finished the rest of the rooms quickly, and rounded up the adults, Dean passing out amulets as he gave them a very abbreviated explanation of what they were doing and going to be facing. Everyone might not have believed they were going to be attacked by actual angels and demons, but between living in this universe with its bizarre happenings and too-obvious magic, and having known Dean for five years, no one acted like they were crazy.

There was one more vessel among them, Manny, an 18-year-old who would have aged out but for the arrangement that kept him at Sonny’s rather than in juvie or actual prison until he was 21. He didn’t have any problem with the idea of saying ‘no’ to any disembodied feathered friends who tried to sweet talk him. Fortuitously, he was also one of the artists, and took a team of adults and older kids out to the barn and the perimeter wall with one of the giant bags of salt, half the spray paint, and a box of sidewalk chalk. A ten-minute conversation with him had Claire confident he got how warding layouts worked. At her suggestion, he had also promised to make a couple of giant devil’s traps with spray paint on the grass. It might kill the grass, but it would be next-to-invisible in the dead of night and might just get some of their demonic guests corralled conveniently far from the farmhouse proper. He also had an idea about making a giant salt ring about 100 feet out from the house, which, if he had enough time and salt, would give them yet another layer of protection.

Claire focused on the kids, including little Kyle, who were warding the house. Once she was confident they knew what to do on the outside, she pulled Dean aside and showed him some of the finer points of angel and demon-proofing. It felt a little ironic to be showing Dean the ropes when this stuff, the hyper-detailed angel and demon defense was his area of expertise. Had been. Would be. Was in another life. 

Unsurprisingly, he took to it like a duck to water. Once he got over the anxiety of marking up Sonny’s house, his home, he was spray painting sigils on the walls with precision, and sketching devil’s traps in sidewalk chalk under every area rug and in front of every doorway. 

It was a little after 2:30 in the morning when Sonny came into the parlor where Dean was on his hands and knees putting the finishing touches on a devil’s trap, and Claire was standing on a step ladder, spray-painting a sigil on the ceiling. Sonny cleared his throat and got both their attention.

“All the sigils are up on the outside of the house, the barn, and the perimeter wall. Manny’s got two kids adding in some additional sigils where they can, and he’s working on the big salt ring now. The doors and windows in the house are all salted. Everyone knows to come in through the front door and check the doors when they move between rooms. I just got done putting sigils in the attic, and all the boys are wearing their amulets. I’m going to pair up Manny with Jimmy just as soon as Manny gets done,” he recapped.

“Thanks,” Claire answered with genuine gratitude. 

“Now what, do we just sit and wait?” Sonny asked. 

Claire turned back to her sigil, finishing it up as she thought. They knew the angels or demons, or both, could be there by 3:00 am. But they didn’t feel that close yet. Maybe luck was on her side, or at least not actively fucking her without lube for once. Or maybe Hauhet had a little more influence on events than she had let on. Either way, Claire knew they had a little more time. And with that time... She lowered the spray paint can, satisfied with her handiwork. She could cut herself, start marking up the walls with blood sigils, but she didn’t want to risk having her blood dry before the sigils were needed. But there was something that needed to happen sooner rather than later, that she could get done. “Sonny, do you have any experience with tattoos?” she asked, hoping she wasn’t being insensitive—ex con didn’t automatically equal experienced with tattoos. 

“I’ve held a tattoo gun before, but not in years. I’m no artist,” Sonny added.

Claire dropped down off the step ladder. “Think you could tattoo some small Enochian characters, just characters, not sigils, simpler than what we’ve been putting on the house?”

“You need a tattoo?” He asked, looking more than a little confused.

“No, I’ve got all the tattoos I need,” Claire replied. “But Dean needs to get ink as fast as possible. Otherwise, our guests tonight will keep coming back.”

“I what?” Dean asked, palm landing dangerously close to the edge of the trap he’d just drawn, as he tried to stop himself from falling over in surprise. He righted himself, and flipped the rug back over the symbol, rocking back on his heels as he looked up at Claire in bewilderment. 

“I’ll explain, just meet me in the kitchen,” Claire said, laying a reassuring hand on Dean’s shoulder as she exited the room and headed back to the entryway where her gear was stashed.

Tattoo guns and supplies in hand, and careful not to disturb any of the salt lines she crossed, she joined Dean and Sonny in the kitchen two minutes later. 

“Anti-possession amulets are good, but they won’t work on you, or rather, as a hunter, and as someone being targeted who is internal to the demons’ plans, it’s way too easy to separate you from your amulet. The safest way to avoid demonic hijacking is with a tattoo,” Claire started. “There’s also the matter of defense against the angels. We have to make you unplottable.”

Dean and Sonny fixed her with twin stares, clearly not getting the reference. 

“Harry Potter? They’re like three, four books in, right? Hasn’t the whole unplottable thing come up?” Claire tried.

“Wait, those British kids’ books with the magic boarding school?”

“Are an international cultural phenomenon on a par with Star Wars, which has way more movies when I’m from, or Marvel, which doesn’t have a cinematic universe yet. So, anyway, ‘unplottable’ means cannot be found or mapped. We need to make it so the angels can’t find you or track you through supernatural means.

“Now in my world you actually had the Enochian carved into your ribcage, by an angel who’s on our side. He’s supposed to be on our side here too, but I didn’t have time to get him and make sure he’s solid before coming here and saving your ass,” Claire explained.

“Carved? In my ribcage?” Dean asked looking horrified and clutching his arms tightly around his ribs.

“Hardly the strangest or most painful thing ever done to your body,” Claire said with a shrug. “And much harder to circumvent than a tattoo. A well-placed cut or burn could disrupt the tattoo’s protections, and an angel can remove a tattoo if they know it’s there and are in physical contact. So, we need to make sure the tattoos are hidden under your clothes, unknown by most, and if we’re lucky, you’ll stay in one piece and angel free, until I can get Cas to re-carve you.”

Dean shuddered. “Can you make it so they can’t possess me? So I’m not a vessel?” he asked hopefully.

Claire hung her head and shook it slowly. “If the runes exist, I don’t know them, and even if they did, anything I do to you that interferes with your ability to be a vessel, Michael’s vessel, might also make it so you wouldn’t work for the purpose of restoring the multiverse. I’m sorry.”

Dean nodded, the clipped motion the closest Claire had seen him act to the Dean she knew. He pulled out a chair, set it down, hand resting on the back and asked, “How do you want me?” 

“Sit with your back against the chair, shirt off,” Claire said as she moved to get set up.

“What no tramp stamp?” Dean snarked.

“These need to be where you can see them easily. Inspect their integrity regularly, but easily keep them concealed.” She explained as she pushed Dean’s shoulder against the seat back and started inspecting his skin, cleaning it with a sterile wipe as she went. “Any recent injuries, nerve damage I should be aware of?”

Dean looked up at her through half-lidded eyes and too-long eyelashes and blinked slowly. “What you mean like you don’t know every little detail? You know my future, my past, and a creepy amount of detail about my family history but you don’t know if I have nerve damage?” It was false bravado because he was scared, and suddenly Claire had more insight into the Dean she knew than she’d ever had before.

She considered her words carefully. “Your world and mine diverged in their similarities about five years ago from your perspective. A lot can happen in five years. Also, I have literally never known you in this body, so I have no idea what kind of damage you took before you got reset to factory default settings.”

The revelation was greeted with silence. 

She began inspecting Dean’s torso and chest more closely while Dean and Sonny shared a lot of raised eyebrows and an increasingly perplexed conversation. As she had suspected, this Dean had more and different scars from what she’d seen on her universe’s Dean the scant handful of times she’d seen him shirtless.

“Did I die?” Dean asked eventually, his voice barely more than a whisper. 

“More times than I can count,” Claire admitted. She glanced up from where she was poking a spiderweb pattern of scars criss-crossed by a couple of neater surgical lines on his left ribs. “I’ll explain later if you want. All the dying is one of the things I’m trying to avoid. Now here?” she asked, tapping lightly. 

“Yeah, no, that… I have nerve damage there. No hot/cold sensation, half of it I can’t feel and the other half—” he gasped in pain, and Claire withdrew her hand quickly, “is, yeah, hypersensitive.”

“Okay, well we’ll avoid that,” Claire agreed. “Anywhere else?” 

“Not on my torso,” Dean admitted. 

“Good,” Claire said, letting out a sigh. She turned to the table behind her, slid off one glove, and pulled two photos from a slim manila folder. She laid them out in the table, and put on a fresh glove. One picture was a black and white image of the antipossession mark. The other was a photograph of an x-ray of Dean’s ribs from her universe. 

“What the?” Sonny muttered in alarm.

“Like I said, a friendly angel carved it into your ribs,” Claire explained. “Now, can you tattoo those letters, in that order, but it doesn’t have to be in that pattern, somewhere on the right side of Dean’s torso, Sonny? I’m going to get the antiposession sigil on your chest on the left.” She looked up at Dean, who had the closest thing to a deer-in-the headlights expression she’d ever seen on any version of him. “Dean, is that okay with you? It’s—I know maybe you don’t want tattoos, but this is the best way I have to keep you alive and somewhat safe for the foreseeable future.”

“Uh, yeah, that, that works,” Dean stammered.

“I think I can do that,” Sonny confirmed. 

“Great,” Claire said with more confidence than she felt. 

The next half hour or so was filled with the gentle buzzing of two tattoo guns working in tandem, punctuated only by the very occasional slightly exaggerated intake of breath from Dean when either Sonny or Claire moved to a new location or section of their related designs. Dean was stoic as ever, and did not seem particularly distressed—Claire didn’t know, and couldn’t quickly find in the jumble of Dean’s memories Hauhet had downloaded into her brain how Dean felt about tattoos in general. Knowing Dean, he might have been the type to get turned on by the process rather than pained by it. She was doing her damnedest to respect Dean’s privacy and not look in the direction of his crotch. 

She soon discovered the nerve damage on Dean’s side extended a bit further than he had told her, and judging by the surprised, half-strangled yelp he gave, farther than Dean had realized. When she tried to ink the flame border on the lowest arc of the sigil, needle poised over the inside of Dean’s left pec, near his breastbone, he let out the yelp and started to flinch before going stock still. The buzzing noise that had permeated the air for the last half-hour stopped abruptly, and Claire shot a nervous glance at Sonny. 

“It’s okay,” Sonny said. “He flinched away from me; I didn’t mess up any of the letters.

Claire looked up at Dean, struck again with just how frigging young he was. He was sweating profusely, and tears were welling in his eyes.

“Sorry, I didn’t know,” he managed around bit-back gasps. 

“Dean,” Claire said as gently as possible, wiping away blood weeping from the part of the sigil she’d just finished. “I can’t stop, I can’t leave this part undone, and I can’t move to avoid this area, there’s too much of the mark already complete, and we don’t have time.”

Dean’s eyes were wide with pain and fear, but also determination. “I know,” he panted.

Fingers moving cautiously, Claire felt the skin around the spot that was giving Dean so much trouble. 

“It doesn’t hurt when you do that. Just the needle. I mean I can hardly feel your fingers,” Dean admitted.

Claire swore under her breath. What she wouldn’t give for some angel healing right now. “Tell me where it feels normal,” she said, as she continued prodding.

“There. And there,” Dean paused again while Claire continued her exploration. “And also there.”

This time Claire grunted. The affected area, or at least the part of it that overlapped with where the tattoo needed to go, was about the size of a quarter, but irregularly shaped. She squinted at the skin, just barely making out faint scars she hadn’t noticed before. Luckily, most of the area would just need to be crisscrossed twice with the fine lines of the pentagram, but there was about a half-inch, maybe a little more, that needed to be inked with the thicker border, and that was going to be sheer torture. Claire shared a look with Sonny, saw understanding there, and turned back to meet Dean’s eyes.

“Okay,” she said quietly, and then with more confidence, “Okay. We’re going to do this as fast as we can Sonny’s going to stop for now so he can hold you back. If you need to scream, scream. If you need a ten-second breather, say so. And the second it stops hurting like this, let me know so Sonny can get back to his job.”

“Okay,” Dean nodded. “I’ll be okay. Just feels like acid ice knives on fire.”

Claire snorted a little at the description. “Let’s go.” 

She worked as fast as she dared, needing to get the lines straight and solid, Dean a slightly vibrating bulk in front of her. The angle was awkward, and it was killing her neck, but she powered through. Dean didn’t scream, but he did give out a few gasps that would have been wails of anguish coming from anyone else. After another five, maybe ten minutes, Dean stilled, and his breathing eased.

“Okay, I’m okay. That feels normal now,” came his answer a few seconds later, once he had caught his breath. 

Sonny released Dean and went back to the Enochian spell he’d been inking. 

A few minutes later, Dean spoke up. “How old was I?” 

Claire paused and looked up. 

“When I died, when I got a new body, whatever.” 

She paused to think about it, not really wanting to have this conversation with Dean right now. Then again, she had brought it up. “Twenty-nine. That time, you were 29. It wasn’t the first time, or the last. Just that time...”

“I got a new body?” he finished.

Claire shrugged, careful to keep her hands steady. “More or less. It’s actually related to how I met you. The angel who brought you back had taken my father as his vessel. My dad, and his angel were why we met.”  
“I’m sorry,” Dean said after another moment or two. 

Claire almost asked ‘what for’ but pieced it together. “Don’t be. None of it was your fault, or mine, and the angel involved, while he has his issues, is actually a pretty decent guy. He’s family. Someone you lo—care for a lot. Me too.” She paused to wipe away more blood and ink and inspect the finished sigil. It looked pretty good considering the rush job and awkward angle, not to mention all the other complications. The lines were intact, and the symbol complete. “There we go. That one is done. How are we doing with the Enochian?”

“Two more words?” Sonny replied. 

“In that case, I’ll get Dean cleaned up over here while you finish that side.”

Claire had just finished smoothing cocoa butter and plastic wrap over the antipossession sigil, when the lights started to flicker. 

“Shit,” Dean murmured, immediately picking up on the significance.

Shit indeed, if the power went out before Sonny finished the Enochian. Claire glanced over at Sonny, “How close?”

The lights flickered again, and the buzzing of the tattoo gun stuttered and stopped. The lights blinked, then came back on. The buzzing resumed, frantic for a moment, before it stopped again. The lights were still on. “Done,” Sonny declared. 

The lights flickered again. “Clean him up. I’ll go greet our guests. And hurry,” she said as the lights flickered and finally died. “Watch the salt lines, use the crowbars just in case. If there are any hostless demons, Acheri, daevas, that kind of thing, you’ll be able to hold them off. Flashlights too,” she added as she picked up her own flashlight form the table and switched it on. “Daevas hate light.” If she remembered correctly, from Dean’s memories. After all, it had been demon free range on earth for so long, she had no idea what a coordinated, large-scale demon attack in a world where the gates of hell were still closed would look like. 

Sonny nodded at her. 

“Good luck,” Dean murmured softly.

“You too,” she acknowledged. “And remember, if anything asks, the answer is—”

“No,” Dean agreed.

“No matter what they say.” 

With that, Claire pulled out her angel blade and left the room. She didn’t want to kill any innocent hosts or vessels, but she wasn’t about to leave her best weapon behind. If anything, it might convince the angelic bastards she meant business.

She picked her way through the darkened house to the foyer, where many of the house’s residents were gathered.

“Remember, stay inside the salt lines,” she said, addressing the people gathered there. She turned and nodded at Manny, who was sitting on the stairs with a very sleepy Jimmy tucked against his hip. “If anything talks to you, if you hear voices, don’t listen to them. Definitely don’t say ‘yes’ to anything.”

Manny nodded. Everyone else was silent. 

Claire checked her position standing firmly between two salt lines, just inside the edge of a devil’s trap she knew was inked under the throw rug on which she was standing. Confident in her position, she dropped her center of gravity, settled her weight on her feet, and let her angel blade slide down her arm. 

Everything was eerily silent. With the power cut, there was no electric hum. At the early hour of morning, there were not yet cars out on the road to drive by. No one spoke, only the faint heavy breathing of some of the more anxious kids and adults punctuated the stillness.

 ** _Slam!_**

The windows shook, rattled, and bowed from all directions as glowing, electrically crackling purple-black smoke crashed and pressed against them. 

“What the—” one of the older kids said.

“Demons,” Claire answered as she shifted her grip on the angel blade. If the demons were here the angels probably wouldn’t be far behind. 

With another bang, the door flew open shoving the first salt line out of the way. The demons writhing outside burst through the door only to be contained by the next salt line and bounced back. Two creepy demons that looked like little girls with pointy teeth and claws materialized out of the purple-black smoke—Acheri demons! She’d read about them, had some of Sam’s memories about them, but had never actually seen one before. Without hesitation swung the crowbar she was holding, and watched with an almost out-of-body fascination while the demon-without-a-host let out an unearthly scream and dematerialized as the iron bar swung through it.

The cloud of demons shrunk back as a figure emerged from the sparking mass and stepped forward. It was a young—very young, maybe 18—girl with gaunt features and a short blond pixie cut. 

Shit.

Claire knew this girl. Not just this girl, she realized, but the demon riding her. Memory after memory of the host and demon, both known as Megan, surged through her memory, images flipping by faster and faster. Images of this host, Meg in Sam, her later host brunette with a heart-shaped face, with Sam, with Dean, with Cas—really with Cas in the biblical sense, and that felt close enough to weird incest by proxy to make her shudder slightly—friend, foe, ally all rolled into one. 

In the split second her shock left her frozen, Meg had stepped forward closing the distance between them. 

Claire stepped back suddenly, bumping into the bottom stair and almost losing her balance, but she managed to get out of range. Before the demon could respond, Claire, stammered, “Meg?”

At the sound of her name, Meg froze, paused now safely under them devil’s trap drawn on the ceiling. In her moment of obvious confusion, she was joined by another demon-in-host, a slightly taller, fine-boned, olive-skinned brunette in a black dress, who carelessly stepped up beside Meg, placing herself within the trap as well.

Claire didn’t know this demon or its host by sight, but as soon as it looked at her, smiled, and showed its true eyes, she knew what she was dealing with. 

“We’re looking for Dean Winchester,” the second demon said. 

“What, you’re letting this red-eyed crossroads minion call the shots?” Claire said to Meg, her surprise genuine. “I thought you were daddy’s favorite? I know Azazel doesn’t let crossroads demons boss his kids around.”

Meg looked even more shocked and... sad than Claire had ever seen a demon look.

The crossroads demon smiled with decidedly inhuman glee. “U-hn,” she snorted, “Haven’t you heard? Azazel’s dead.”

Well double shit. That was both potentially helpful and unexpected. Hauhet had showed her, told her what happened to Abbadon, but she hadn’t shown her anything about Azazel. 

“How’d that happen?” Claire asked, already having her own theory.

Meg and the crossroads demon shared an uncomfortable look. The crossroads demon just glared at Meg with disapproving smugness. 

“We don’t know,” Meg said quietly. 

“So, lemme guess, your big boss decided not to trust Azazel’s kids, which is why you’re calling the shots and we all,” Claire gestured expensively without sparing a glance for the residents gathered behind or around her, “weren’t torn to shreds by daevas the minute you morons cut the power and tricked out the salt line?” It wasn’t really a question.

“It doesn’t matter, I’m her for Dean Winchester. I have information about his brother, and I’m willing to share it, if he’ll make a deal,” crossroads said, smugly. 

“Nice try, trotting Sammy out. It might have worked. Of course, if you’d really done your homework, you’d be riding someone 5’11”, a little scruffy round the edges, and oh yeah, MALE.” Claire shook her head. “I hate to break it to you, but for all Dean’s bluster, you’re really not his type.” She turned back to Meg. “I’m sorry,” she said. 

Meg looked confused. And rightfully so, what was Claire sorry for? Everything. That time travel had screwed someone who, despite being a demon, was actually a pretty decent person. That despite the time travel Meg Masters still got jumped by a demon, only this time she was so young, the possession and her absence must be extra-torturous for both Meg and her family. Sorry about how Meg had died in her reality. Sorry that Cas’s detour into mad God-hood had fucked Meg over so epically. Sorry that if Claire followed through with her plan, things would probably royally suck for both Megs, demon and host. 

“Never mind we’ll just—” the crossroads demon was saying as she made to walk towards the kitchen, breaking off when she slammed into the invisible edge of the trap and pulled up short. She looked down at the bare ground, then at Claire, perplexed. 

Claire shook her finger back and forth disapprovingly then pointed up at the ceiling when the demon still didn’t clue in. 

The crossroads demon opened her mouth, gearing up to launch into a threatening tirade, but Claire ignored her. All her attention was on the old friend-new enemy-possible future ally that was Meg. “I need you to get a message to her superior.” And wasn’t that ironic, the person who had killed Meg on Claire’s world might just be the one to save her here, to save them all, or at least put some sort of brakes on demonkind before their eagerness to see the apocalypse through got them all doomed. The demons’ blind obedience to an archangel, who would as soon destroy them all as look at them, had been one of the factors that had led her world down the path to permanent oblivion. Curbing that instinct here might be the only way to save the entire multiverse from certain doom. Give Crowley the right motivation, it could work out.

“You want me to go to Lilith?” Meg asked, confused. 

“How dare you—” the crossroads demon protested, but Claire’s raised hand shut her up.

“Not her boss, her superior. You know, calls himself king of the crossroads, makes way more deals than anyone else, goes by the name of Crowley, human name of Fergus MacLeod.” Claire paused watching both demons’ expressions of shock. “And whatever you do, stay the hell away from Lilith, and her minions too, especially that ex-witch bitch Ruby. They’d all like nothing better than to kill you terribly and I’d rather that not happen.”

Meg continued to look dumbfounded while the crossroads demon struggled against the trap, red eyes out and fixed on Claire now. 

“You idiot. You know I’ve got no choice but to kill her now, and if you try to exorcise me, I’ll just come back.” She turned to Meg and held out her hand, much like she’d seen memories of Sam Winchester doing. 

“No,” Claire said, and again the crossroads demon stopped fixing her with a glare. “Meg? Her I’ll exorcise, she’ll climb back out of hell in no time and we’ll get her host some medical attention, get her back to her family if she wants. You, I’m just gonna kill. Your host has been dead for years, and I can’t have you tattling to your boss.” She let the angel blade shift in her grasp and struck fast and true, skewering the crossroads demon and its host before the demon could react.

Turning back to Meg, she hit the button on the pre-recorded exorcism and got it playing.

_Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus, omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis congregatio et secta diabolica.  
Ergo, draco maledicte. Ecclesiam tuam securi tibi facias libertate servire, te rogamus, audi nos. _

As the recording went through repeat, Claire locked eyes with Meg. “Remember, take my message to Crowley. This way lies death and destruction for all. The apocalypse isn’t the answer.”

Meg seemed to nod before her head snapped back and a thick cloud of black smoke erupted, joining the clouds of smoke erupting from other demons outside, inside, and all around. Claire caught the girl, Meg’s, body and gently passed her to Sonny, careful not to disturb any more salt lines.

When the last of the demons was gone, she hit ‘stop’ on the recording, wondering how long they’d have to wait for the angels to show.

The telltale flutter of wings told her not long at all. They must have been lying in wait outside the wards, waiting for the demons to vacate. That didn’t surprise her.

What did surprise her was the _who_ that showed up. There were a few random hench-angels including one who teleported onto the stairs, and was looming threateningly near their two vessel kids, but the heavy hitters were Zachariah and—

“Naomi?” Claire asked in surprise. “What are you doing here? Apocalypse 101 isn’t your specialty. You do internal intelligence.”

“You know who I am?” Naomi asked in confusion taking a few steps towards Claire.

Which prompted Zachariah to go into his standard Zachariah schpeel of guilt-tripping pontificating—or at least that had been Dean’s word for it. After Zachariah stressed for the fourth time how he must be granted access to Dean Winchester or everyone’s safety, and the fifth time of complaining about how he didn’t know who or what she was, but he wanted her gone, Claire had had enough.

“No one will be getting any access to Dean Winchester tonight. No one will be possessing or taking vessels of anyone on the premises. So, stop trying to coerce a yes out of a poor, scared little kid. As I’m sure you’ve found the plans for the apocalypse have been disturbed a bit. Well, I’m here to disturb them further. Two groups of human and near-human magic users have managed to break the flow of time in this universe. That’s why your visions aren’t working, why your time travel doesn’t work, why your rank and file are twitchy and panicking. I know this makes you want to speed up the apocalypse even more, but I can’t let you do it. You see, the apocalypse is one of those links in an unbreakable chain that leads to the end of the world. That’s what blew up my universe, and I’m not going to let you do the same thing here. So stop trying.”

“How do you know who I am?” Naomi asked again.

“I’m from a different universe’s future. I’m well-acquainted with your work when you branched out. Metatron is hiding out at a motel. Take my wrist and you’ll see the address, the scope of his deception. Stop him, before he gets his hands on any tablets or prophets and breaks heaven.”

With some reluctance, Naomi touched Claire’s tattoo. The contact lasted only a moment, but Naomi’s eyes flashed blue, and she said, ‘Oh,” and turned to lave.

Zachariah followed Naomi’s retreating path for a full two minutes before he spoke again. “What have you—”

“Perhaps I wasn’t clear. You’re not welcome here,” Claire said letting the angel blade slip into her hand, carefully slicing her pal along the way. She switched the blade with her other hand and advanced on Zachariah. 

“Now wait a minute, where did you get that toy—”

“It’s not a toy,” she said, voice tight. “And neither is this.” As she spoke, she slammed her bleeding palm against the carefully concealed angel-repelling sigil on the wall behind her.

There was a bright flash of light and the sound like a thousand freight trains coming at once. Her vision blinked out…

And then there was silence. The night punctuated only by the slow tick of a cooling radiator and the rustling of breeze through a broken window or two.

“Is it over?” Dean asked, emerging from the kitchen looking truly shaken. Claire got the sense they were battering on his mental defenses pretty hard.

“For now. We’ve just got to shore up these defenses, make sure the warding holds, and show you how to keep demons and angels out for good.”

Dean just nodded. “Can I get a nap first? I’m itchy, he admitted.”

~~~

After they angels left, they all crashed, slept. Sonny volunteered to keep watch trading off with Claire after six hours, once she’d had enough sleep not to faceplant on the stairs.

She stayed with them that day and the next, building a long-term warding scheme, pulling out every bit of knowledge she had learned or absorbed, until she was sure it would hold, disorienting any who came near. She left a back door of sorts. One angel, with permission, could gain access, but would have no power there, Cas. And if he got out of hand, well, they all knew how to do the repelling sigil. Worked every time.

That night, after a hearty dinner, and a very awkward call to the sheriff about the two young women who had broken in—one who dropped dead and the other who was disoriented (their demon corpse and ex-hose, respectively)—she considered it a job well-done, and let herself relax a little, wandering the property.

She was sitting on a stone wall near the barn when Dean found her. “Can I join you?” he asked.

“Sure,” was her reply.

They sat there, drinking iced tea (Sonny’s home was clean and sober, after all) and unwinding in comfortable, companionable silence. She could tell Dean had questions. She did too. She just wasn’t sure how to ask or all the competing ideas jammed up inside.

Dean started sliding closer and closer, until finally, Dean leaned over and pressed his lips to hers. For a split second, her body responded to the kiss before her mind caught up with that was going on. That was short-lived and followed by a cascade of emotions vying for her attention. _How dare he!_ Eugh! But then again—wow, this Dean was hot, for a guy. But he was also _Dean_ , the same, well not exactly the same, but close enough to the same Dean who would eventually have called her on her bullshit, and taught her how to be a hunter, and tried to save her from herself even when she didn't want saving. And she couldn't stop the part of her brain that recognized Dean as _Dean_ by smell and perception, even without the familiar notes of Baby's engine and seats filling out the profile. And that part of her brain was recoiling, a knee-jerk, gut instinct twitch of revulsion, a flinch she couldn't control, that had her shoving back, almost violently, and immediately regretting it.

Because this was Dean, and from his perspective, they were almost the same age, she a little older than he, and from everything she knew about Dean—what she'd pieced together from listening to Sam and Jody and from observation, what she'd read in Dean's journals, and from every but of understanding Hauhet had shoved into her head as an insurance policy before dumping Claire in this world—this was how he responded, his defense mechanism, his number one go to for keeping himself in his misperceived place and keeping the rest of the world at arm’s length. Why wouldn't he try it with her? How did she expect he would react with everything this universe had done to him and everything she'd piled in his lap? And wasn't it also more than that? She could feel the uncertainty, the undercurrent of actual affection, of admiration that infused his kiss. Complicated emotions he didn't know any other way to process.

But it was too late, because she had frozen and flinched, and started to pull away, and say what you would about Dean, but he was a good person at heart, and he'd never try to put himself where he wasn't welcome. Dean pulled back, abruptly, face shocked, flaming pink of embarrassment blooming on his cheek as if she'd slapped him, and he stumbled to his feet and tried to run away. Worthlessness, self-disgust, revulsion, fear, embarrassment, and soul-deep pain flashed quicksilver across his features before his mask--already near-flawless in projecting casual indifference--settled into place.

"Right," he muttered half to himself, then louder, with a smile that didn't reach his eyes. "Sorry about that, princess, of course you wouldn't want--" he trailed off as he turned away. 

He was about to run, and everything was going to blow up in her face, all the careful work turned to ash and blown away because of one stupid... Her hand shot out and grabbed him by the wrist, touch firm, but gentle. 

"Dean, wait," Claire managed.

He stopped, but didn't turn back to her.

And she understood, because his pain and shame and loneliness were palpable.


	5. Chapter 5: Through the Cracks in the Mind's Eye

**Chapter 5: Through the Cracks in the Mind’s Eye**

_They were staring out at the swirling landscape of nothingness as another universe was washed over by the waters of eternity, flooded and taken out to the endless sea, wave after wave wiping it away like so much sand, until another universe was gone, even its impressions indiscernible._

_“So, if the Winchesters are younger and most of the fucked up stuff in their lives hasn’t happened yet, like their deaths and time in hell, Sam’s time in the pit, then things are better, right?” Claire had asked._

_Hauhet had smiled at her, and the expression looked wrong. Not because Hauhet didn’t quite perfectly mimic human expressions, but because it wasn’t a smile, not really. More of a bitter, knowing grimace._

_“Some things are better, yes, but like I said, the way that your enemies broke time, they collapsed chains of cause and effect. So consequences exist without their predicate cause.”_

_“Like Chuck being off exploring the universe with Amara, even though Dean’s never had the mark of Cain and Amara should still be locked in her prison?” Claire asked brow furrowing in confusion._

_“That is but one example. There are many such anachronisms. The Winchesters in the lost universe have never said ‘yes’ to an archangel, never served as a vessel, but yet each of them bears the effects of their future possessions, even thought the circumstances of those possessions may never come to be,” Hauhet explained._

_“What effects?” Claire asked._

_“What happens to a vessel after an angel leaves?” Hauhet asked._

_Claire resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She was still a little touchy with the whole Socratic method, hiding the ball thing, but she wasn’t about to go snarking at the goddess of eternity because she wanted to cut to the point. “The angel leaves traces of their grace behind in the host,” Claire answered after a moment of searching her memory._

_“Indeed. And that grace will make the Winchesters easier for you to find, but it is also a tool your enemies could exploit. And since both of them had fairly significant angel possessions in the future, they both have a fair amount of grace left behind. Especially Sam, since he has played host to many angels over the years.”_

_Claire nodded. That could be a complication, but it could also help her. So, why was Hauhet acting so… concerned? “Why do I get the sense you’re not worried about a little left behind grace?”_

_Hauhet just looked at her expectantly._

_“Right,” Claire sighed. “So, if they’ve got the effects of playing vessel to a host of angels, even though they’ve never met those angels and God’s off cruising the universe with his sister even though she should still be locked up, and he should still be a douche… You’re saying what, Sam lost his soul? Or he’s crazy because he’s got the effects of millennia in the pit even though he’s never been there?”_

_“You may recall that angels, once a vessel has said ‘yes,’ always maintain a crack, a back door, if you will into their vessel’s mind,” Hauhet offered._

_“So, Lucifer’s still in the pit, but he’s got an all-access pass to Sam’s mind?” Claire wondered aloud._

_“Not all-access,” Hauhet clarified, “but he figured out how to reach Sam, to torment him with visions, experiences of the future they would have shared together. And Sam has lived with that, since he was 12, trying to shut him out, keep him away. He’s a darker child than he was at his age in your universe, and in many ways, he has a lot more in common with the man you knew than the child he was at the same age in your world. Only, he hasn’t had the benefit of angelic mind healing courtesy of Castiel.”_

_Well, shit… that did not sound very good. Claire didn’t need to use all that much of her very vivid imagination to figure out all the ways a demon-tormented Sam could throw a wrench in things. “He’s… he’s using his powers, isn’t he? He’s embraced the demonic side of himself to try to fight the angelic side,” because she knew Sam in all his vaguely sociopathic-but-trying-to-be-the-harmless-boy-next-door glory and that was exactly the kind of thing Sam would do. And he didn’t know how to do things half way, as evidenced by his suppression of all his powers after Lilith’s death and Lucifer’s initial jaunt topside._

_“Your insight serves you well,” Hauhet responded._

_“That’s a Star Wars reference, isn’t it?”_

_“I thought it would be appropriate considering we are discussing Sam and Dean,” Hauhet admitted._

_“So, I’ve got to gain the trust of teenage, psychologically tortured, demon-powered Sam. Piece of cake,” Claire had said sarcastically. She could manage. Couldn’t she? Yeah, she could, unless—_

_A nauseating possibility struck her._

_“If Lucifer has a way into Sam’s mind, does that mean Michael has a way into Dean’s? Do I need to worry about—”_

_“No,” Hauhet responded quickly, shaking her head, the movement seeming almost normal on her form. “Dean never said ‘yes’ to the Michael from this world and the Michael from the Apocalypse world, as he called it, has never been here, nor has Dean been there. Even with cause and effect collapsed, it’s not strong enough to intertwine the different worlds within this universe, this reality. If it had, your job might well be un-fixable. Dean’s mind is safe, for now,” she explained._

~~~

Claire felt accomplished even though she was leaving Dean behind. He believed her; of that she was pretty sure. At least he was grateful for the assist, and true to the Dean she knew, had taken her advice to heart and was actively angel-proofing Sonny’s farm. It was probably for the best that he’d stayed behind. She couldn’t in good conscience tear Dean away from the family he’d built, from the little kids he was protecting. Sure, maybe they wouldn’t be a target if he wasn’t there, but then again, maybe they’d all be a bigger target if Dean wasn’t there—what better way to hurt him than to make him regret leaving, convince himself he was responsible, even when he wasn’t. Claire knew in that position she’d twist herself into a guilt-ridden pretzel, and that kind of knee-jerk responsibility and self-blame was something she’d always shared with Dean.

She trusted Dean. He’d hold the line, be okay until it was time for them to move on the bunker. She’d done the whole, from the future, different universe, time is broken, I can help make it better song and dance, and it had only taken 72 hours, give or take a catnap or two. 

If she could keep this up, she’d collect the set within a couple of weeks and have a plenty of time to strategize how best to acquire the bunker, identify the anchors, and re-stabilize the universe.

Of course, she should have known thinking like that would only jinx her.

Claire knew from Hauhet’s tuition Sam was in Baltimore. Without that lead, Claire wasn’t sure where she would have gone. As Dean had indicated, the trail on Sam Winchester went cold in 1995. It was as if the moment Dean was arrested and wound up at Sonny’s farm, the rest of the Winchester family evaporated, whisked away into oblivion, blinked out.

If you knew more, though, you could spot the thread, follow it for a while. Claire stopped in a public library in Westchester County and ran as many internet searches as she dared. Supplemented it with reviewing newspapers from around the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states on microfiche, and a couple of carefully timed and staged calls to Pennsylvania State Police that called on every ounce of police procedure and detail she’d ever gathered to socially engineer the necessary information she couldn’t get through public sources. On her third call, she ran into a Park Service rep who mentioned calling in DIS, and she realized she had followed the thread too far. She’d disconnected the call and booked it out of the library as fast as she could. Never before had she been so grateful her paranoia had her parking two lots over. She had changed the plates on the Loyale again and was waiting to pull out of the shopping center where she’d parked when she saw them: four black SUVs, tinted windows, too many antennas, and too souped-up for the general populace, all headed to the library she’d just vacated. _Right._ No matter how familiar this place seemed, she needed to remember she was effectively an alien in a foreign country. There were too many risks she didn’t yet understand, the innocuously (or was it ominously) named Department of Internal Services, being top on her list.

She got back on the road and drove through Manhattan and into New Jersey before she dared stop again to take in the research she’d gathered.

Of course, when she got to Manhattan, she nearly rear-ended the minivan in front of her, the Loyale swerving suddenly into the next lane over to avoid the collision. She should have _realized_ what she was going to see there, should have put the facts together, paid attention to the date, stopped, thought, and used common sense, but… Well, Claire had been too distracted by all the differences between her reality and this new world, trying to make sense of a collapsed and tangled history without getting herself killed by the tripwires and pitfalls inherent in universe hopping. 

She’d been so goal-oriented since her arrival, she hadn’t even stopped to think about what would be different in her _own_ dearly departed universe had she traveled back in time to May 2000.

The Twin Towers were still standing. There was no One World Trade Center, no super-tall and awkwardly placed residential skyscrapers scattered throughout midtown and downtown. Just the old skyline. The one from Ninety’s TV shows like “Friends” and a half a dozen other random shows she’d caught Jody watching absentmindedly when she thought no one was paying attention. Everything else and she’d gone and plunked herself in a pre-9/11 world. 

Of course, there was no guarantee there would even _be_ a 9/11 in this universe, or anything like it. In many ways, the fear and xenophobia that had plagued the U.S. and much of her own world after that event were still present here, but differently directed. No one in this universe (officially, anyway) knew who or what had plunged half a city and three small towns into darkness. Or what had caused catastrophic explosions in other places. Everyone was afraid and they just didn’t know who the enemy was.

Of course, while the Thule Society and the BMOL may have broken time in this universe in their endless quest to get the upper hand, they weren’t the only ones who benefitted from the confusion left in the wake of the temporal collapse.

There was an unsolved murder near the Appalachian Trail in central eastern Pennsylvania from March 1995. The deceased was identified as one John Bonham, not the musician, and a grainy photo in a newspaper article clipped from the victim’s driver’s license photo made it pretty clear the late Mr. Bonham was actually one John Winchester. The cause of death was baffling. Not in that the national park service and state police couldn’t figure out what killed him, but rather there were so many different things that killed him, and they couldn’t figure out how several of those causes were accomplished in the isolated stretch of park where his body was found, particularly not without any damage to the surrounding forest. John had been eviscerated, throat slit, burned from the inside out, eyes gone—but burned out, not removed—strangled, and dropped from some height. No one could figure out what could have done all that to his body without making a mark on the surrounding forest. It clearly wasn’t suicide, and for about 6 weeks there had been a panic among trail hikers that there might be a new, particularly sadistic ritualistic killer—ritualistic because John was found with a bible, holy water, chalk, _The Key of Solomon_ , and various and sundry other religious-adjacent paraphernalia.

Of course the _what_ , _who_ , _how_ , and _why_ of it all were pretty obvious to Claire. John had been hunting a werewolf—the silver bullets in his gun made that clear. Sam had been with him. Probably stayed back in the Impala. 

Only the werewolf hunt had been ambushed by demons—hence the sulfur—and then some angels had showed up to join in the fun. That explained the large, deep, odd-shaped stab wounds and the charred, smoked out eyes. Some asshole had frigging smote him. And then they let the werewolf feast on his heart to cover up the hit.

And Sammy had watched. Hauhet had given her an idea of what had happened, Sam hanging back by the car, hearing a noise, fear and curiosity getting the better of him. He’d seen John die. Saw the demons and angels talking, probably talking about him, why John was a target. 

After that he’d run. There’d been no chance of hanging around the Impala hoping to be found. And with the recent “attacks” causing widespread internet and telephone outages, disrupting public transportation, and screwing with electronic banking and ATMs, Sam had run out of options real fast. 

Some concerned citizen had reported a little, lost-looking kid wandering around the small towns west of Philly. He’d gotten picked up by CPS. No one could find his parents, he had no idea, and he wasn’t about to tell anyone what had happened to John, not when he didn’t know who could be watching him.

So he’d disappeared into the system, and then… disappeared. He’d run from three different foster homes before he managed to get himself permanently lost. Since then he’d been wanted for a host of petty crimes—shoplifting, minor B&Es, theft—as well as the big ones—hacking, wire fraud, antiquities smuggling, and grave desecration. 

But he’d left a trail of breadcrumbs that Hauhet had known how to follow. Now it was up to Claire to befriend Sam and convince him to help her out.

Should be easy, right?

~~~

It didn’t take that long to figure out what library Sam frequented. She kept her distance, but watched his comings and goings from the small studio he’d somehow rented under the table.

There was no trace of Sam Winchester or any of the other names he’d used, been given by the system, or even hinted at as an alias. Whatever Sam had been up to, he’d learned how to hide himself and hide himself well. 

From what she could piece together from the library records of one John Colt, apparently Sam’s alias—but only for library purposes—he spent a lot of time researching Greek and Latin, world religions, Native American history, folklore, wicca, and several obscure biblical languages, like Aramaic. He spent a fair amount of time online in the computer lab, but never seemed to leave a search history, and he liked head deep into the stacks of the library’s research collection and sit there, without foot or water, studying. 

It wasn’t clear if Sam was going to school or had completed a GED, because try as she might, she couldn’t figure out what name he might be using for those projects.

So, on the fifth day of surveillance, confident Sam was at the library researching, Claire parked the Loyale in a nearby lot, loaded notepads and paper into her most student-looking backpack, and headed over.

It was weird how lax the security was from her perspective. There were magnetic scanners to detect book smugglers, but no metal detectors, no restrictions on backpacks or other bags, and no cops. Just one kind-of-board-looking security officer at the front door, and another in the computer lab. 

She made her way to the research collection and headed towards the back. There were a couple handfuls of people in there, with some college students finishing finals, and the high schools gearing up for final exams, but Sam was easy to spot. He was at the very back of the room facing the doorway, with a large table to himself. There was almost a fortress of books around him, a dozen or two texts stacked like a barricade on three sides of him.

“Hi, mind if I join you?” Claire began, doing her best demure college student impersonation. “I’m doing a research project on fertility symbols in seventeenth century folklore and can’t help but notice you have several of the recommended titles with you. “Maybe we can share?”

Sam looked up, then jerked back. “What the hell are you?” he demanded, his voice low and threatening, almost lower than it had been when he was twice his current age.

Claire looked down, feigning confusion, but also genuinely confused. “I’m a college student.”

“No, you’re not,” Sam shot back. “You’re not even human!” he hissed.

Later on, Claire would cringe at her response, but the first thing that came to mind was, “Well, neither are you?”

Which was exactly the wrong thing to say. Sam went from perplexed—and strangely fixated on her tattoo, now that she thought about it—straight past agitated to defensive and then on the attack.

He sprang to his feet knocking his chair back, so it clattered to the carpeted floor with a resounding wooden ‘thud.’ Heads popped up all around the library.

Sam was speaking, his volume and pitch both kept low. “How the hell do you know that? Are you one of them? Working for Lucifer?” he held out his hand in a gesture Claire recognized from memory. Sam was in full possession of his demonic abilities, and he was trying to exorcise her. 

“I’m not possessed, and I don’t want you to be possessed, or Lucifer’s vessel. I know he’s been talking to you, but everything he showed you, we can avoid that, stop it so it never happens,” Claire countered calmly.

“Then you’re just an idiot. Don’t you realize that by coming here, you’ve tipped of DIS. The Thule will find me. And then their British magic user friends will follow. And then the angels and demons will descend, and it’s lights out.”

“I need your help,” Claire said truthfully. “I know where your brother is, and I can help you get to Dean.”

“You stay the hell away from me and the hell away from my brother!” he shouted. 

Everyone was looking at them now. 

Then there was a blinding flash of light. Claire flinched, and when she looked back, Sam was gone. All his research with him and a good selection of the library’s resources. No alarms sounded. There was no trace. And when Claire glanced back at her watch, 15 minutes had passed.

It reminded her of some of the Men of Letters’ spells Sam and Dean had discovered or encountered in the future. How this Sam learned it, she had no idea.

Confused and defeated, she went back to the Loyale. There was no sign of Sam at his apartment. Upon closer inspection, the place was vacant, totally spotless. However, he’d done it, Sam Winchester had effectively disappeared again.

 _Shit._ This was going to be harder than she thought.

~~~

At first Claire had thought to just regroup and stay put in Baltimore. Move to a new hotel, get a fresh perspective, research, maybe reach out with her mind to try to _feel_ Sam’s archangel grace, a remnant from a future possession that hadn’t happened yet.

But no sooner had she checked out of her hotel than a blonde, blue-eyed asshole in an expensive black suit with a very distinctive ring, popped up in the parking garage. 

The Thule Society. Hauhet had warned her they were watching Sam, wanted him for his demonic abilities. But Claire thought she had covered her tracks. She couldn’t think of what she’d done to tip them off.

“You are not supposed to be here. You are unnatural, an abomination, and your interference with our plans will not be tolerated!” the man yelled. “This is your one warning.”

“Huh, you’re a 90-year-old Nazi necromancer, and I’m the unnatural abomination. And since when do you give warnings?”

“You must leave this place and never return, or I will bring down upon you the full wrath—” 

Claire faked a step toward him and the guy froze. Great, they were afraid of her? “Yeah, well you guys fucked up so bad the multiverse asked me to come clean up your mess. So, how bout you stop breaking time, and stay out of my way.” She reached inside her jacket, flashed the angel blade, and he was gone. Running off faster than he’d appeared.

She was really starting to hate Baltimore.


	6. Chapter 6: Building a Mystery

**Chapter 6: Building a Mystery**

That night, in a motel room as far from Baltimore as she could get with a three-hour drive, Kaia came to Claire in her dreams.

It wasn’t the first time Claire had dreamed about Kaia. In her world, after Kaia’s death and before the end, an endless parade of happy what-ifs had haunted Claire’s dreams. Glimpses of a future where she’d had more time with Kaia, where they had time to grow as friends, as lovers, to know everything about each other, their favorite memories, secret joys, biggest embarrassments.

_Where Claire knew every stroke and lick and kiss that made Kaia fall apart, where she got to worship Kaia for all the wonder that she was._

Sometimes Claire would wake panting, wet with release, floating in absolute joy for a few precious moments before the bleeding gut punch of reality came floating back in and she remembered Kaia was dead.

_Dead, and it was all her fault._

Other times, in her dreams she would be lying with Kaia in bed, kissing or making love or just talking, when suddenly Kaia would be bleeding, her eyes would go dead and she would look at Claire with accusation and ask her “Why?”

Why did Claire have to be selfish? Why did she have to be stubborn and refuse to listen to Jody? Why did she have to go to the dark place? Why did she think she was good enough for Kaia? Why did she think she could possibly help?

Those nights, Claire had woken up screaming, crying, unable to console herself, knowing she didn’t deserve forgiveness. 

Jody had tried to hide it from her, but in doing so, she’d made sure Claire would find out. Kaia’s counterpart had been trying to kill Claire, but had hit Kaia instead. Because Kaia tried to save her… why had Kaia tried to save her? She was reckless, a fuckup, unloved, unwanted. Everyone left her. Kaia left her…

Some part of Claire had known it wasn’t true, but she’d never been able to convince herself. Couldn’t believe it at her deepest core where all the self-doubt and regret lived. Even now.

But this… this was different. She knew immediately she was dreaming, and yet, this was nothing like a dream, nothing like the dreams she’d had in her universe. And this Kaia…

She stood at the foot of Claire’s bed, shaking her head, a faint smile upon her lips. It was this bed, in this motel room, where Claire was currently crashing for the night. And this was her Kaia. Not an idealized vision, or a nymphomaniac sex dream, or a bleeding shade. This was Kaia as she existed in life. Sarcastic, resilient, badass, totally having none of Claire’s shit.

“Who are you?” Claire asked.

“I think you know the answer to that considering how much time you’ve spent thinking about me, mourning me since I died, fantasizing about me,” Kaia answered. “I felt the same, by the way.”

Claire sat up in bed now, dragging her hands over her face and through her hair, tucking her knees up in front of her, as if the physical barrier they presented would provide her mental and emotional space from the apparition before her. “I know you’re Kaia,” she said, frustrated. “I mean, what _are_ you? You’re different from my other dreams. I mean, I know this is a dream, so what are you? A different figment of my imagination? A version of you from this universe? What?”

“Well, considering the version of me in this universe is about two months old,” she scrunched up her face and spared a glance at the tacky month-by-month tear-off calendar on the bedside table, “nope, not even that old yet—I think that should answer your last question.”

“So you’re a different version of my imagination? Or, are you, what? A manifestation of Hauhet here to lecture me or guide me, or what?” Claire asked, crossing her arms, and then resting her fists on her knees in frustration. She was too tired, too hollowed out after abject failure with Sam, to play word games with a mental projection.

“I’m not a mental projection,” Kaia protested.

“I didn’t say that,” Claire protested. She hadn’t, not aloud anyway.

“But you thought it, and you can’t hide from me in here.”

“In where?” Claire asked, leaning back against the tacky headboard-shaped molding with an agitated thump.

“In your dreams,” Kaia responded, like the answer was obvious.

“I’m tired, I don’t have time to play twenty questions with the ghost of Christmas past or an obnoxious manifestation of my conscience, or whatever you are. I just want to sleep,” Claire protested.

“You are sleeping. Claire, I’m a dreamwalker, did you ever stop and think about what that means? This is me, here in your dream,” Kaia protested.

“You’re dead.” Claire didn’t even lie to herself that her voice hadn’t broken when she spoke those words. Her voice cracked every time even in her dreams.

Kaia approached the bed, sat down on the end of it, reached out and touched Claire’s wrist. The touch felt solid, substantial, real, _alive_. Kaia’s thumb stroked over the bony point of Claire’s wrist, where Hauahet’s symbol snaked around it. “You’ve got an actual magical, supernatural tattoo, you’re from a different universe, in the future, and you’re on a mission from a goddess who is older than every universe, and you’re questioning the possibility of my existence, that it’s really me, the Kaia you knew, here with you?”

“You’re not in the tattoo—” Claire broke off unable to complete the thought. She’d checked. Before she’d even stepped through the rift into this universe, when Hauhet was describing the boon to her, she had checked, hoped, but among all the memories, not a single one was from Kaia. The only memories of Kaia were Claire’s own, or the memories of her family members who had also known Kaia… like Jody’s poorly disguised attempts to keep Claire from finding out why Kaia had died. 

_Luckily she’d already known or the shock and betrayal that Jody had kept that knowledge from her might have sent Claire over the edge… or more over the edge._

“I’m not in the tattoo, because that’s not the kind of guide I am. I’m not here to share lore or history you wouldn’t otherwise know, I’m not here to give you inside knowledge about your targets deepest secrets so you can earn their trust and find their soft spots, and I’m not here to help you figure out how to defeat the Thule Society and the British Men of Letters. I’m here for you, because you needed someone for _you_ , not for the mission, someone you love, someone who loves you. And I’m still in love with you.”

“But you’re dead. She was trying to kill me, and you saved me, and it’s my fault, and you’ve been dead… you were dead.”

“You know death isn’t the end. And being a dreamwalker, having traveled to so many different worlds within our universe, even the manner of my death, even as it all was washed away, I wasn’t quite gone. Eternity gave me a choice and I chose you.” She leaned forward and kissed Claire’s lips.

It was a gentle, quiet kiss. Closed mouth, no tongue. Almost chaste, except for the soul-consuming love Claire could feel through it. Kaia’s touch was radiant, life-giving, and like nothing Claire had ever experienced. She brought her fingers to her lips in awe. “Why did you—”

“Because I wanted to.” Kaia was still leaning forward, staring into Claire’s eyes, and Claire could see infinity reflected back at her. 

“I’m the one thing that’s here for _you_. We can’t be together the way we both want, but I’m a dreamwalker, and I can always be with you in your dreams. Whenever you need me, whenever you want me. When you need to talk or just escape. I’m here to remind you of why you’re doing this, of why you said yes.”

“You’re here to remind me of what I can’t have?” Claire asked bitterly, choking back a sob.

“I’m here, to remind you your sisters are still out there, Patience and Alex, you can save them. They can live again, here, with you in this world.” Kaia shook here head. “They’re not gone. And I’m here to remind you that there’s a version of me out there, a baby, who’s like me, a dreamwalker, and she’s been born into this messed up universe, and if you fight, you can give her a future, give her a life, maybe a better life than I ever had. You can find her and mentor her and show her how to stay safe from the dark place.”

“But I can’t be with her, because here, I’m 23 years older than she is, and I don’t know if I can—” But that wasn’t true. Because Claire knew without a shadow of a doubt she would always help any version of Kaia she encountered in any world in any universe. Even if this universe’s version of Kaia’s dark counterpart showed up and tried to stab her, Claire would try to help her. She couldn’t not do it. Deep down she knew she would put any awkwardness and regrets and misplaced sexual tension aside and see Kaia for who she was.

“We both know you’ll be there for her, make sure she has a good life. I just want to make sure you stay sane enough to get there. And I want some of you for myself, however I can have you.”

“I’ve seen ‘Dollhouse’ you know, and I’m not sure if I can be satisfied with the whole being in love with a mental implant of my dead lover thing,” Claire responded defensively.

“That’s not really what this is, what I am,” Kaia said with fond exasperation.

“How do I know you’re not just a delusion, a figment of my imagination I cooked up because I _am_ cracking up?” Claire asked.

“You can believe whatever you want, I can’t stop you. But what you believe won’t change what I am, who I am,” Kaia answered. 

“I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t know how this is supposed to work,” Claire said, frustration creeping into her voice.

Kaia reached out and wiped tears from Claire’s cheeks. She hadn’t felt the tears fall. “In case you haven’t noticed, there’s never been anyone like you in the entirety of every universe’s existence. You are absolutely unique and your circumstances are unprecedented.”

“I guess that makes you unique too,” Claire murmured.

Kaia’s kiss this time was deeper, longer. She let her arms wrap around Claire, pulling her in, holding her close, pushing and nudging just so, until Claire had let her knees fall to the side, so Kaia could get closer. Kaia’s lips were soft, her tongue gentle, exploring, inquisitive, Claire felt like she was flying apart, her body on fire every place Kaia touched it. When they finally had to pull back to breathe, Kaia stayed close, running one thumb along Claire’s cheek bone.

“I guess I am,” Kaia said, responding to Claire’s last musing. “And I’m here for you, however you need me, however we can be together, as much or as little as you need. And I need you to realize that no matter how much you’re beating yourself up about Sam, it’s not over. Nothing has been lost or broken that can’t be regained. There’s still hope and you’re going to win this.”

“How do you know?” Claire whispered.

“Because I have faith in you; I’ve always had faith in you. I’ve always known you were important, destined for something bigger and more profound than any of us could imagine, and you would always be there to rise to the occasion. Because it’s who you are. You’ve survived the impossible again and again. You don’t quit, you don’t lose faith, even when you should, you just forge a new path. And I knew that. I knew that I had to save you. I knew that when I died for you.”

Claire was sobbing now. “I’m sorry.”

“Shhh,” Kaia whispered against her cheek. “You were never to blame. Everything I’ve done, everything I do now is because I want to. And I would do it all again. We’re gong to see this through; I know you will do it. You just have to believe in yourself.”

“Are you saying you forgi—”

“There was never anything to forgive. Claire, I love you,” Kaia repeated. “Rest now. The universe will look better in the morning.”

“But you won’t be there.”

“I’ll always be in here,” she touched Claire’s forehead, “and in here,” she laid her right hand over Claire’s heart, “and in here in your dreams with you. Just look for me and I’m with you. Always.” 

Claire nodded, but she was shaking, sniffling and gasping as the tears came, tears she hadn’t let herself feel, hadn’t left fall, when she was awake. She just lost herself in her grief, in everything she’d lost and everything she was afraid she’d fail to save, until at last, her tears slowed, and her sobs turned into faint gasps, and the stutter step of her breath evened out. “Will you stay with me?” she asked.

“Of course,” Kaia said, and she shifted her arms around Claire, pulling back the covers, and sliding them both down into bed. When Claire was arranged securely in the circle of Kaia’s arms, head pillowed on Kaia’s outstretched arm, Kaia reached out with her free hand and tucked the covers securely around them. “Sleep now,” she said, pressing a kiss to back of Claire’s head. “I’ll keep you safe.”

Exhausted, Claire let out another long sigh and surrendered to her desire to believe. Between one breath and the next, she fell asleep in her dream, secure in the arms of her first love.

~~~

After what felt like an utter and abject failure with Sam, Claire was feeling… well, not defeated, but frustrated, concerned. She still didn’t know how much time she had before whatever irrevocable cosmic event happened that would make this universe irretrievable and damn all of existence to a state of un-being.

To put it lightly, she could do for an easy win right about now.

On one hand, going after Donna or Jody should be objectively easier than locating Charlie. Claire _knew_ both of them and had known them for years. Sure she hadn’t known them at this age, and it was possible that, like Sam, the changes to the timeline already the general collapsing of cause and effect could have rendered them very, very different people than those she had known, but with both of them, she wasn’t determining on a bunch of info from journals and other people’s memories. She had so much personal knowledge, stories, things they’d told her and she could draw on. Donna or Jody would be totally easy to recruit.

Only for all the ways they wouldn’t. And Claire didn’t want to examine why she rejected the idea of meeting up with either of them. She didn’t need to examine it. She knew. It would be.

Final.

There was also Cas, but she wasn’t even ready to acknowledge that situation. Every time her mind drifted to him, Hauhet’s words echoed through her mind.

_The loss of you and your mother hit Jimmy hard. In this world, the angels approached him far earlier. They wanted his help to get their plan back on track. They had lost track of the Winchesters and could no longer see through time. Jimmy was an easy target. There was nothing holding him back from saying yes. Of course, without Dean Winchester starting up team free will, there hasn’t been any reason for him to take a stand against Heaven, so your father is still alive sharing his body._

Claire wasn’t sure how to even think about talking to Cas or Jimmy.

So, that left two options, Bobby or Claire. So, of course, she went with retrieving the person she’d never actually met. At least if she fucked this up, she wouldn’t be setting fire to precious, treasured memories.

Of course, by the fifth day on the task, she had never really thought about how—comparatively—fucking hard it was to find people in 2000. Not to mention how difficult it was to find a paranoid, 15-year-old, super-genius, runaway hacker who didn’t want to be found. Whatever technological leaps had been brought about by Thule Society and British Men of Letters’ collective messing about with the timeline were overshadowed and outweighed by the advancement in State Sec heralded by the ever-mysterious and omnipresent Department of Internal Services.

She was starting to think finding Sam had been _easy_. (Well, to be honest, it wasn’t the _finding_ that was a challenge, but the convincing him to trust her and not disappear while also avoiding bringing the authorities down on his head.)

Maybe Charlie would be the opposite? After all, Claire had precious little to go on when it came to locating where one Charlie Bradbury f/k/a Celeste Middleton was located. 

Sam and Dean hadn’t known Charlie in 2000. They didn’t meet her until years later, so their memories, which were some of the easiest to access in the infodump Hauhet had provided, were not helpful. She knew Charlie hadn’t always gone by Charlie and even less frequently went by Bradbury. She knew her birth name was Celeste, and in Claire’s world, Charlie had already been on the run from the FBI by the time she was 12. And somehow that incredibly young, always-on-the-run, kid with no family had held herself together enough to avoid capture by the authorities, support her catatonic mother, develop a hell of a reputation in the hacking and cracking communities, and still educate herself enough to be in a super-competitive position at Dick Roman’s corporate empire by the time she was 27.

Kid was hella impressive.

But how the hell was Claire supposed to find her?

Celeste Middleton was a dead end. Through the local library’s terrifyingly slow internet connection and some creative use of police contacts listed in John Winchester’s journal, Claire had figured out Celeste’s parents had died in the same accident, and she had gone missing from foster care at the same age. Only, this time, it wasn’t the FBI, or rather _just_ the FBI, who was after her as a person-of-interest. There were two different federal warrants for her arrest, one from the FBI, and one that had a mysterious and unfamiliar designation on it, that Claire figured out with 30 seconds to spare was a designation used by DIS.

She was still embarrassed about that whole incident. She barely made it to the Loyale before the black SUVs descended on the Falls Church public library. Claire hadn’t taken a full breath until she was 2 hours outside of town, the entire drive spent glancing in the rearview mirror and white-knuckling the steering wheel every time she saw something vaguely black and SUV-shaped.

Claire didn’t dare resume her search until she’d crossed into West Virginia and spent a very tense night sleeping in the car at a freeway truck stop. After that she’d stayed away from any direct searches on Celeste and stuck to aliases after that.

There were no likely hits on Charlie Bradbury, none on Charlie Heinlein or Charlie LeGuin. Claire found herself wading into the murky waters of the dark web circa a more paranoid 2000. It was only a prudent flash of memory that warned her in time to save her laptop from an untimely demise thanks to a particularly virulent worm.

What wouldn’t she give to have Sam to help out on this? It was his memory that saved her—and like everything else she learned about Sam, she had to wonder what the fuck he had been getting up to and where he learned it to have such detailed memories about digital security and attack. Hell, at this point, she’d consider selling her soul for Wi-Fi (kidding, not kidding).

After eight days of hunting for Charlie, Claire was running out of ideas, the vague sense of doom and the faintly ticking clock that had haunted her since she’d stepped through the rift growing closer and louder with every passing second. She’d taken to running her hand over the tattoo, trying to bring forward memories, will it to show her something that would lead to Charlie. The sense of doom was growing more insistent, and she could have sworn she saw black SUVs passing by on the rode outside. DIS was here. But why, and for whom? 

_But I really think Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” series tackles one of the most fascinating ideas we’ll ever encounter._

It was just a snippet of a memory, but in addition to the name, there was a familiar landmark. In the memory Charlie was talking to Dean, and they were sitting on a bench in front of a nearby hotel. It was maybe a half-mile away. Claire had passed it on her way into town. Without hesitating, she grabbed her keys, and jogged to the Loyale.

Ten minutes later she was at the reception disc of the local Red Roof Inn, asking if the staff had either a Celeste or Charlie Asimov. After confirming there was a Charlie Azimov, Claire took down the room number, muttered her thanks, and set off for the elevator banks at a run. She was almost to the elevator, when she heard a familiar giggle, and turned towards the hotel restaurant. 

Red hair, petite, rail thin, omnipresent messenger bag snug across her back.

“Charlie,” Claire called out, raising her voice as much as she dared, “Charlie Bradbury?”

The girl stopped, turned and took a few steps towards the elevators. “How—how do you know that name.”

Claire was turned with her back to the elevators, so her peripheral vision captured both the restaurant and the lobby. A black SUV drove by the lobby window and screeched to a halt. _Shit._

Claire closed the distance between them and wrapped her arms around Charlie in a fake hug. She could feel Charlie poised to elbow her in the ribs and stomp on her instep, so she whispered hastily in Charlie’s ear. “DIS is here. Just go with it. You have everything you absolutely need in the bag right?”

“What? Yeah,” Charlie said, obviously thrown. 

“Then just walk with me, act like I’m your sister or your cousin or your friend, someone you know and like. I’ll explain everything when we get to my car,” Claire added, cupping her hand under Charlie’s elbow and leading them towards the restaurant.

They blew by the hostess stand when the host’s back was turned, and pushed through the swinging doors to the kitchen.

“Hey, you can’t be back here!” someone shouted.

“We were just leaving,” Claire said half-heartedly as she broke into a job, towing Claire along by the elbow. They made it through the maze of appliances and cold storage and out the back before anyone from the front desk showed DIS where to go.

“You know DIS has actually been infiltrated by actual magic users hell bent on world domination?” Charlie asked as they fi thlly made it to the Loyale and Claire unlocked the doors.

“Yup. They’re called the Thule Society,” she affirmed.

“Oh wow, you actually believe me and you are totally being serious. I think I’ll take that explanation now,” Charlie said, the words coming rapid fire, almost as one continuous breath. 

Claire took the fastest route possible out of the hotel’s parking complex, and didn’t breathe freely until the rearview mirrors had been clear for five miles. She shot a glance at Charlie who was clutching her laptop bag for dear life and looking around nervously. “I’m sorry that was so close, and sorry about your stuff,” Claire offered.

“I’ll make do,” Charlie said resignedly, “But I’ll take that explanation now, please.” 

“Let me get out of town, and then I’ll show you everything.”

They stopped at a busy truck stop half an hour away. Claire offered her wrist to Charlie, and gave her the full download, watching with fascination as Charlie reacted. “Whoa, that is so much cooler than I even imagined, and also frankly, far more terrifying. But it sounds like you need someone with my awesome computer skills to help.”

“That I do,” she agreed, “that I do.”


	7. Chapter 7: Donna the Vampire Slayer

****

**Chapter 7: Donna the Vampire Slayer**

She wasn't sure what she was expecting when she got to Minnesota. It certainly wasn't the bubbly, popular, new college student she got. If Donna hadn't looked so much like, well, Donna, Claire might have thought she had the wrong kid. 

"There's a Donna Hanscum who's a student at the University of Minnesota," Charlie said hopefully. "Could that be her?"

Claire turned to look at the laptop Charlie had perched on the motel room's tiny dining table, the strange mix of archaic-but-new technology surrounded by candy wrappers and empty bags of chips. "Can I see?" she asked.

Charlie looked at her like she'd grown a second head. "There's no picture, it's not like this is like a yearbook or face sheet or something... What?" Charlie asked frowning in confusion at Claire's sudden stillness.

Swallowing the snicker that threatened to escape, Claire managed to say "Nothing." She was pretty sure her expression had come out more like she was choking on a lemon. "I'm just pretty sure Harvard actually has a Facebook right now." She shook her head. "Just trust me, in six or seven years, you'll get it." She looked back at Charlie, who true to firm had already brought up another internet explorer window, where she was doing something very questionable looking with code. 

"Oh, cool, you're right they do have..." She stopped, closed the window, and turned back to Claire. "This is one of those future knowledge things, where I just trust you and don't press or poke around, because it might sic the monsters on us, right?"

"Something like that," Claire agreed. "What can we tell about her?" Claire asked, squinting as if that would make the college webpage more revealing.

"She's undeclared so far, but her electives suggest she may be leaning towards a business major... Um, she tried out for the cheerleading squad, but didn't make the cut, and she pledged for a sorority, looks like she's a delta girl," Charlie rambled.

"That's it?" Claire asked when it was clear no more information was forthcoming.

"Yeah," Charlie replied. "She just finished freshman year and there really isn't much on the campus intranet. I mean, it looks like she uses papyrus as the font in her email signature in First class--eww" Charlie shuddered, "but her campus or at least her classes aren't really using Blackboard yet, so there's not much there."

"First Class?" Claire asked.

"Common academic email program," Charlie replied.

"Blackboard?"

"Intranet program that lets teachers and students interact, post assignments electronically, sometimes turn in assignments, have discussion boards."

Claire shook her head, "God, the nineties are weird. When I was in high school, we did everything electronically."

"It's 2000," Charlie protested. 

"Close enough," Claire objected. Turning her focus back to the completely alien, unhelpful alleged internet, she asked, "Aren't there any pictures? Blog posts? News articles?"

"What's a blog--"

Claire just glared. 

"Never mind, but no. She's not in any clubs other than the sorority and their website is um..." she gestured at the luridly pink and purple animated page with flashing clip art of a martini glass, "not particularly informative. She's about the right age and she's from Hibbing." Charlie shrugged, "She's the only Donna Hanscum from Hibbing, so do you want to check her out?"

For the first time since stepping through the portal, Claire was truly at a loss. Was this Donna? How had sorority sister, cheerleader, business major, Donna become sheriff vampire slayer Donna? And if she was so happy and, normal, how could Claire just jump into her life and turn it upside down?

"I know she kind of sounds like Buffy in your reality, but um, she's a cheerleader? That fits," Charlie pointed out.

"And Buffy did try to pledge a sorority," Claire recalled, "shit, sorry, was that a spoiler?"

"Last season."

"Whew, okay, so, any idea where to find our cheerleading sorority sister?" Claire asked.

"Well, the registrar's office actually has a pretty good firewall, but student employment's security sucks. She applied for work study at the dining hall, and her application has her home address, and says she worked at 10,000 Lakes Ice Cream Parlor last summer, so maybe she'll be working there again?" Charlie said optimistically. 

Approximately 30 hours later Charlie was holed up at the best semi-reputable motel they could find in Hibbing--actually more of a family outdoor sporting lodge--and Claire was staking out Donna's house, her red Subaru Loyale parked down the block and across the street. She hoped she didn't look that suspicious, but given how damn nice, and normal the neighborhood looked she was pretty sure she was utterly failing at it. 

The streets were quiet and gently winding dotted with a mixture of timber frame and brick houses on moderate-sized lots. Some of the lots were home to leafy deciduous trees and all of the lots were relatively flat. Everything was sunny, open, exposed, and there was absolutely nowhere for Claire to hide. 

She raised her binoculars again, trying to hide behind the steering wheel. The house that might be Donna's, or rather her parents', was one of the nicer brick houses on the street. From what little Claire had pieced together from the phone book and library microfiche, Donna's dad, if it was her dad, had some sort of supervisory or foreman job at the positively giant iron mine on the outskirts of town and her mom was in school administration and was a girl scout leader in her spare time. Of course, it was lunch time and Claire still hadn't caught a glimpse of Donna or anyone who might be this Donna, so she still wasn't sure if she had the right house or if she was just creepily stalking some normal midwestern family.

The sound if a car starting caught her attention and she dropped her binoculars. A car, a new-ish looking Subaru Forester was pulling out of maybe-Donna's driveway and heading her way. A middle-aged man with glasses in a shirt and tie drove past her, casting a long, disapproving, and very suspicious glance in her direction. She thought she saw him pulling something from his waist, maybe a flip phone.

Well, shit. She'd clearly overstayed her welcome. There would be no more surveillance from her car in this neighborhood. At least not without some serious spell work to conceal the car's appearance. As soon as the Forester had rounded the corner and driven out of sight, she fired up the ignition and drove out of the neighborhood as quickly as she dated. If Donna's dad had called the cops on her, she wanted to be long gone before they got here, and she had no idea what the response time was in this time, place, and universe. 

Might as well try the ice cream shop. 

She stopped on the way to swap out the rear license plate and also made sure to change her own appearance, ditching her leather jacket for a lightweight sweater, pulling her hair back into a messy ponytail at the back of her head, and grabbing a pair of glasses for good measure. She hoped the image she projected was vacationing college student and not creepy stalker. 

The 10,000 Lakes Ice Cream Parlor was located mid-block on an idyllic tree-lined street where the downtown shopping core, for what passed as a downtown shopping core in a town of about 15,000 people, faded and spread out into a more transitional zone where the shops gradually thinned out as the road stretched towards the surrounding rural areas and accompanying outdoor activities. There seemed to be both an interior shop and a sliding window that took advantage of the last half-block of sidewalk to entice patrons to walk up and get ice cream to go.

Feeling a sense of embarrassment she could neither place nor rationalize, Claire pulled over and backed into one of the angled parking spaces, grabbed her wallet and slowly exited the vehicle. 

Before she could decide whether to brave the shop's interior or just go up to the window, Claire heard a high. Clear, infectious laugh that quickly mellowed into a giggle. She couldn't make out what was being said, but she'd know that voice, that laugh anywhere.

Donna was standing behind the shop's sliding window. She was wearing a 50s-inspired pink gingham short-sleeved dress with a silvery metallic nametag that said "Donna" in clear block print. Her long, blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail high on her head with a pink gingham strip that matched her dress tied around it. She was smiling, her eyes practically twinkling with joy as she passed a double scoop of ice cream out the window to a waiting customer. She was buxom and curvy and vivacious and about a hundred other adjectives Claire new but had never had reason to ascribe to someone before. If someone had asked her, Claire would have described Donna as a cross between a cheerleader and a college softball player, the latter being entirely influenced by the vague idea of softball players she had from Alex and Dean's mutual habit of watching and discussing the college softball world series whenever they got a chance. 

There was a reflex pang of loss at the thought of Alex, stuck in a bubble, outside of time, maybe forever, and for Dean, her Dean who was really dead and gone and would never be again, but it passed quickly. Something about seeing Donna so young and full of life in front of her filled her with hope and joy and pushed away the darkness, the sorrow.

Damn, Donna was hot. And barely not jailbait. And that was all kinds of awkward, because she was Donna--who was somewhere between Claire's Aunt and her second mother--but not this Donna in this world at this age.

Donna turned her luminous smile to Claire and for a split second, Claire felt her heart jump in her chest.

"What can I get for you today?" Donna asked, addressing Claire, who was now first in line and hadn't even glanced at the menu.

"Uhhhh, double scoop of chocolate chip cookie dough in a sugar cone," Claire managed, hedging her bets about common belatedly hoping she wasn't coming across as a total freak.

If her discomfort was showing it didn't seem to affect Donna, who was still smiling, and speaking again, "Would you like chocolate cookie dough or vanilla?"

Claire tore her eyes away from Donna's lips and looked her in the eye. "Uh, excuse me?"

"We have chocolate chip cookie dough in chocolate ice cream and in vanilla," Donna explained, pointing to the entries on the menu. "Which would you like?"

"One of each, please," Claire answered with a smile she hoped was, encouraging.

"You betcha," Donna replied and turned away to begin preparing the ice cream. 

A minute or two later, Donna was back in the window and holding out the cone with a "here ya go."

"Thanks," Claire said in acknowledgement. 

"Hey, I don't think I've seen you around before," Donna observed. "Are you just visiting?"

"Uh, yeah," Claire replied, wishing she had bothered to spend more time thinking up a cover story. Rookie mistake. "I'm on summer vacation, from college," she stammered.

"Me too! Isn't college awesome? Where'd you go?"

"Um, back east, a University of--" she drew a blank, trying to think of college campuses she'd at least been around so she could give some sort of vaguely accurate portrayal. "Maine," she finished after a while.

"Oh, in Orono," Donna said in her lilting accent, which was even more lilting and kind of adorable.

"Yeah," she agreed, smiling because Donna was smiling. 

"Whatcha doing here?" Donna asked, "Got any great plans?"

"Mostly just passing through. I'm on kind of a road trip? Thought I might check out--" her mind drew a blank.

"Oh, the iron mine? Everyone checks out the iron mine 'cause it’s the biggest in the world."

"Yeah," Claire agreed, feeling super awkward and glancing around. But there was no one in line behind her and she wasn't holding anyone up. "Thought I'd check out the mine, then maybe stay here as a home base for a day or two, go hiking up north, check out the state forest, a couple of lakes." 

“Oh, sounds fun, I’ve got some great suggestions if you’re looking for recommendations,” Donna offered.

Claire looked at her quizzically for a moment, was Donna being genuine? Just offering travel suggestions to a random stranger? Well, apparently, she was, and maybe it wasn’t so odd. Then again, after her experience with Sam and the level of paranoia he had displayed… Donna’s openness and normalcy was equally surprising. “That would be great, actually,” she said after a pause she hoped wasn’t too awkwardly long.”

Donna smiled back at her, one of her genuine, happy smiles that reached her eyes and didn’t have a hint of fakeness behind it. It sent butterflies in Claire’s stomach that she did not want to analyze too closely. “Well—” and she was off, with idea after idea, day hikes, more challenging options, what places allowed camping, what was a tourist trap and not worth the time, which park entrances would be less crowded this time of year. 

Claire let her words wash over her the familiar cadence of Donna’s voice giving her a sense of peace while the enthusiasm of her words gave Claire hope. 

“I’m not sure about places farther out than that,” Donna was saying, “A lot of places have, changed, you know, had attacks, natural disasters, but we’ve been really lucky around here, nothing like that has happened. Hibbing’s just same old Hibbing.”

The comment pulled Claire from her thoughts. “You guys are really lucky here, I mean, some of the places I’ve been through on my, um, road trip, they’re barely recognizable.” 

“Well,” Donna smiled, “It’s good to be lucky I guess.”

Fearing the conversation was drawing to an end and not wanting to make it awkward or take her leave of Donna so quickly, an idea popped into her head, details of Donna’s youth. She wasn’t sure if the memory and knowledge was hers or something Hauhet had given her, it was one of those gray borderline facts that just seemed to swim in the ether of her brain. “Hey, you know what, I’d really like to get in some shooting practice while I’m out here. I’m not going hunting or anything, just want to plink some cans or put holes in paper—do you know any good places to do that around here? Is there a range or something?”

Donna’s face was unreadable for a moment, and Claire feared she’d overstepped. Maybe _this_ Donna’s past was different enough from her Donna’s that shooting was no longer a fun and useful skill she’d had since childhood but something traumatic. But Donna’s face spread into a smile quickly enough, and again, it was a real smile, so Claire relaxed. “You know, there really aren’t any ranges around here these days. There was an indoor range about ten miles outside of town that got shut down two years ago by DIS, something about lead poisoning and improper ventilation.” Donna leaned forward conspiratorially, “Frankly, I don’t know why DIS cares about that, they’re supposed to be resettling refugees, I’d expect a complaint like that to be handled by the EPA or the ATF, but what do I know, right?” 

She winked at Claire and Claire found her nodding in agreement. 

“There’s a lot of big forest around here where it’s pretty safe to set up targets, but rather than hunting around for it, you know, my uncle has a fishing cabin on about 25 acres half an hour north from town. Folks set up cans and targets there all the time when they’re not fishing. I could take you, show you around? Maybe this weekend, if you’re still in town.”

“That sounds really cool, I’d like that,” Claire found herself responding, unsure if Donna was flirting with her or just being Donna. “Um, what’s—”

“It’s Thursday today, so day after tomorrow? Want to meet me here at 10, unless you want to meet somewhere else?”

“Sure, but, you barely know me,” Claire protested. _Why am I protesting_? She mentally slapped her wrist. She needed to figure out what Donna knew, if she’d had _any_ exposure to the supernatural at all or if she was truly innocent, unexposed, even in this fucked up, time-collapsed alternate reality.

Donna’s smile grew even bigger, and she waved her hand dismissively. “Pish-posh, you’re good people. I can tell. And sometimes you just gotta do something nice for somebody, am I right? We’ll have a good time.” 

“A—awesome,” Claire stammered still not sure what to make of her sudden success. “Do you want me to give you my number?” She patted her pocket, “I have a cell phone, if you need to reach me.” 

“Eh, I’m not a big fan of long distance fees. Tell you what, where ya staying?”

“Cabin Creek Country Lodge?” Claire said, suddenly unsure of herself.

“Nice place,” Donna replied nodding with approval. “If anything changes, I’ll call you there. You know how to reach me here, just ask for Donna, and you are—”

“Claire,” she responded, offering her hand to Donna for a handshake which was warm, soft, and felt a little awkwardly formal.

“Clare, see, now we both know each other and how to reach each other, and I’ll meet you here on Saturday at 10.”

“O-okay,” Claire agreed, reluctantly releasing Donna’s hand. She started to turn away, stopped, and turned back to Donna. “It was real nice to meet you, Donna,” she added.

“You too, Claire,” Donna agreed, and waved after her as she returned to the Loyale.

Two minutes later, Claire found herself back in the driver’s seat, hands braced on either side of the steering wheel, reminding herself to breathe. She was shaking and she didn’t remember the walk back to the car. What the hell had happened back there? She had realized, academically, the temporal differences and alternate universe weirdness might make her interactions with everyone, well, weird. But she hadn’t expected anything like _this_. Whatever this was.

To be honest, once Hauhet had said there was a way to save Alex and Patience, Claire hadn’t really given a second thought to the other option, fading out of existence with everything else. The idea that she might be able to piece together a version of her family, albeit a younger, age-displaced version with some fucked up magic-and-temporal-war issues in their backgrounds, had just been icing on the cake. She hadn’t thought… She hadn’t imagined.

“Fuck!” she screamed at nothing and no one in particular. Louder, “Fuck! Fuck! Fuuuuck!” She slammed her hands against the steering wheel. She was pretty sure she was falling for Donna, her aunt, second mother, mentor, friend Donna, and she was pretty sure Donna was still straight, or at least she _guessed_ that was the case, because it had never come up in Claire’s universe and she’d only ever seen Donna dating men, even if Donna and Jody did have a sort of Cagney and Lacey vibe to them. But Claire was still torn up, lost, and conflicted over Kaia, who maybe, _might_ exist in this universe, only she was a frigging baby, and Claire was now at least 20 years older than her. And to top it all off, Donna was on her “must have” MVP list from Hauhet. Claire didn’t know why, Hauhet hadn’t said, only that she had to connect with Donna, tell her the truth, and that was a vital piece of having any chance of saving the multiverse. But Donna, this Donna, for all the weird, wrong, and strange in this temporally displaced cesspool of a reality, was happy, hopeful, normal. A kid with a loving family—from what Claire could tell—and a bright future and no exposure whatsoever to the supernatural. How the fuck could Claire burst that bubble?

~~~

“Who, look at you, getting all dolled up for your big date,” Charlie quipped flopping down on the end of her bed, closest to the bathroom door where Claire was silhouetted as she did her makeup and fixed her hair in the bathroom mirror.

“It’s not a date!” Claire shot back with more heat than she’d intended.

“Facts beg to differ. You’re putting on makeup and you’ve changed your hair three times since breakfast. And you _like_ her, _like_ like, not friend like, and you’re going to do an activity with which I have limited experience outside of videogames, but that television and film has portrayed as a potentially very _sensual_ experience. You adjust her grip on the gun, and fix her stance, and press up against her—”

“Ow,” Claire muttered as she dropped her earing in the sink scrabbling after the tiny stud before it fell down the drain.

“Did you just stab yourself?”

“It’s not a date,” she repeated again, hoping if she said it enough times, maybe she’d believe it.

“It is _so_ a date!” Charlie crowed, flopping back on the bed and bouncing, her legs dangling off the end and kicking in the air. “At least part of you _wants_ it to be a date, or you wouldn’t be acting like this.”

“She’s straight.”

“Are you sure?” Charlie asked.

“No,” Claire admitted. “But she’s also kind of like my aunt or my second mom, and it’s—weird. She’s not supposed to be so hot. I feel like a fucking cradle robber and, argh!” she growled at the mirror. “This is crazy, I shouldn’t feel this way. I shouldn’t be telling this to a teenager.”

“Oh yeah, ‘cause when you were my age you were totally being a kid and not on the run and breaking a million laws.”

“That is so not the point, Charlie,” Claire said. “I mean I don’t know how she feels about me. And I can’t fuck this up and I don’t even know if I should be doing this or if we should just drive away and let her be.”

“You told me Hauhet said—” Charlie commented freezing and sitting up suddenly, her expression deadly serious.

“She did.”

“Then we have to, you _have_ to get to know her and tell her. Like you told me, or the entire universe, multiverse is going to die, we’re all going to die and we have no futures and I don’t want to die, Claire, I don’t—”

Claire was out of the bathroom and on one knee next to Charlie in a heartbeat. “We’ll figure it out. I won’t let us die. I won’t let us have no future, I promise,” she said, looking Charlie deep in the eye while she gave one knee a squeeze. Claire wasn’t sure if she believed that at the moment, but she’d damn well make herself believe it to avoid putting that look on Charlie’s face. 

“Good,” Charlie said, suddenly cheery—in a forced way though, that let Claire know she was still fucked up from the near panic attack a moment earlier, and just putting on a good front—“now get out there and go get your girl, before you’re late.”

Claire looked at her watch. “Fuck!” It was almost 9:50a.m. and the motel was closer to 15 minutes from the ice cream parlor. “I gotta go,” she said, squeezing Charlie’s shoulder and rolling to her feet.

She darted around the hotel room grabbing her keys, wallet, sunglasses, room key, and from the bedside table, her Glock 26. “Stay safe. Lock the door, keep your phone on. Call me if anything suspicious happens. Don’t watch any porn that’s gonna get you in trouble with the feds. Food in the fridge, you know the drill.”

“You too,” Charlie shouted after her as Claire ran out the door.

~~~

The drive to Donna’s uncle’s property was pleasant and uneventful. They made small talk, chit chat. Talked about favorite Movies, with Claire leaning heavily on her knowledge of 80s and 90s pop culture thanks to the Winchester obsession with all things Star Wars, and kept catching herself just in time, from blurting things out about one of the movies that hadn’t aired yet. She threw in some conversation about _Die Hard_ , _Top Gun_ , and the other 80s classics that were staples of Jody’s Saturday morning mental health breaks, her emotions warring between giggling and crying over her recollections of Donna’s long rants about the gun handling and police procedure in _Die Hard_.

At least it was a pretty sure bet. This Donna was already a fan, and the criticisms about the gun handling were already well-formed. 

She didn’t have the police procedural criticism yet.

Claire found herself continuing to oscillate between budding attraction and awkwardness, because Donna was, for all intents and purposes, the same person who had been like her aunt or second (third) mother. So, there was something vaguely incestuous (although not _technically_ ) about her feelings.

And then there was the whole guilt over feeling like she was leading Donna on thing. After all, Claire wasn’t the innocent student passing through on a summer adventure. She was feeling Donna out, considering whether she should blow up her world, destroy her peace and quiet and normalcy. Of course, that was not what Claire was trying to do, but rather what she knew would happen if she revealed herself, her true mission, to Donna.

~~~

“Okay, okay, now this rifle’s got a bit of a kick, so make sure you gotcher cheek weld real tight, and round your shoulders into it,” Donna said, standing behind Claire, and using her hands to adjust Claire’s stance and grip.

The rifle in question was a 1958 Winchester Model 70 rifle chambered in .30-06 that Donna’s grandfather had bought and taught her dad to hunt with and then gave to her dad when he turned 18. Donna had been gifted the rifle in turn on her 18th birthday.

Claire let herself relax, her mind wandering for a moment, to the point where Donna’s voice washing over her made her feel like she was at home, at the range, practicing with Donna and Jody on some Saturday they all had off. Sometimes Alex would come. Occasionally Patience, although she usually just sat back with her eyes and ears on and watched. She was still a bit skittish around firearms, preferring to use her visions to _avoid_ combat wherever possible.

Claire let her breath out, focused on the font sight, and squeezed the trigger, watching as the metal target 100 yards away spun around the pole and flipped to the other side, a satisfying “plink” echoing back a second later. The kick of the rifle brought her back to the present, even as she flipped up the bolt and racked it back, ejecting the spent casing, flipped the bolt forward again, and locked it down. She fired again, and again, watching the targets satisfyingly swing away, letting some of the anger she had been carrying around leach out of her. When the magazine was empty, she flipped the safety on, and lowered the rifle.

“You’re a really good shot,” Donna said, her compliment honest and heartfelt. “Thanks,” Claire answered. She passed the Winchester back to Donna, who took her turn plinking targets.

Donna was also a great shot. 

They worked their way through the rifles the two of them had brought, even shooting cans off a fence with Claire’s .22, before taking a break for a picnic lunch.

Lunch consisted of ham and cheese sandwiches with healthy portions of tater tot hotdish that wasn’t quite _hot_ anymore, but had stayed pretty warm in the insulated bag Donna had packed it in.

Claire let her questions become a little leading, digging into some of the odd goings on in the past five years, wondering what had happened in Donna’s neck of the woods, what she thought about DIS, everything she could think of to get a handle on whether Donna _knew_ something or not.

Donna was open and didn’t balk at the questions. Apparently, what on God’s green earth DIS was up to now was quite the topic of gossip and conversation. But when it came down to it, while Donna definitely suspected there was something _strange_ going on and she was convinced the stories about DIS and their stated purpose just didn’t add up, it was pretty sure she’d never seen anything.

While Chicago and even Minneapolis had been hit by some of the “terrorist” activity, with the south side of Chicago being more or less knocked back to the stone age for a while thanks to a very strangely targeted EMP, nothing obviously supernatural or time-travel-shenanigans-related had made its way up to Hibbing. 

After lunch they shot a few dozen more rounds through the Winchester Model 70, before deciding to call it good at about 3 in the afternoon. 

Claire thanked Donna genuinely for her time and the great fun. But when the moment came where she could have said something, she let it pass. Blip and it was gone. Donna smiled back at her. They packed up their gear, hiked the half mile down the trail to the edge of Donna’s uncle’s property where the Loyale is parked, and had an amicable drive into town. Before leaving, and half on a whim, Claire gave Donna her cell phone number, crossing her fingers she actually be able to keep the number and not have to change it. If Donna noticed the Pennsylvania area code, she didn’t notice. Donna gave Claire her home phone, where she’d be “for the summer,” and wished Claire well in her travels.

At about 5 Claire drove back to the Cabin Creek Country Lodge, parked, unloaded her gear, and headed back into the room she was sharing with Charlie.

“So, did you tell her?” Charlie asked, bouncing on the bed. 

Claire looked over. There were Hostess Cupcake wrappers littering the bed and all over the table around Charlie’s laptop.

“Did you raid the vending machines?” she asked weakly.

“Yes, I thought I’d have a little treat seeing as we’ve been working so hard.” She glanced around the room. “I’ve had a thing for these ever since that ‘where’s the cream filling,’ commercial with the shark in the pool and the swimsuit that was out a few years ago,” Charlie rambled.

Claire was lost. She was pretty sure the commercial in question was before her time.

“Anyway, you’re I might have gone overboard, but you’re dodging the question, which means you didn’t tell her,” Charlie concluded.

Claire put down her bag and sank down on the end of the closes to the door. “She doesn’t know anything. Donna’s an innocent. I mean she’s pretty sure there’s something hinky going on, and she’s figured out DIS is full of shit, but she doesn’t know what the story is. She thinks it might actually be terrorists or pranks. She doesn’t know anything about the supernatural, and I just don’t know how to burst her bubble. I mean, I’m not even sure _how_ she’s supposed to fit into the whole saving the world thing. Maybe if we just, keep an eye on her from afar, when the time comes, whenever we figure out what we’re supposed to do, we can go get her.”

“You don’t sound too convinced,” Charlie observed.

“I’m not. I just don’t know what to do,” Claire admitted.

Charlie crossed the room and gave her a hug. “How ‘bout we go have breakfast for dinner, go to bed early, and go make contact with someone else in the morning?

Claire let her head rest on Charlie’s shoulder. “Sounds like a deal.”

~~~

They were in bed by nine (which was early by the night-owl, on the road hours they’d been keeping) and Claire drifted off to sleep sometime after that.

“You need to go to her, now,” Kaia’s voice woke Claire from a dead sleep. She blinked open her eyes to see they were still in the hotel room. The clock on the bedside table read a quarter after three. She could see Charlie sleeping in the bed farther from the door, their bags already packed and stacked just inside the entrance so they could make an early morning of it after they showered. And there was Kaia, sitting on the side of her bed, looking down at her.

She must be dreaming. Only she didn’t feel like she was dreaming.

Kaia reached out and squeezed her writ wrist, fingers grasping the infinity tattoo. It burned under her touch, images springing to life behind Claire’s eyes. “Donna is in danger now. They’ve sent vampires after her. An entire nest, and they think she’s the reason for all their woes. It’s too late for her family. It will be too late for her if you don’t act _now_!” Kaia’s voice seemed to push through her, a resonating bomb.

Claire’s eyes sprung open again and she sat upright in bed. She was truly awake now, Kaia was gone, but the lingering feel of her presence surrounded Claire. The tattoo was glowing a deep, electric indigo, and was swirling on her wrist as if it was alive. Claire could feel the seconds ticking away, panic and imminent failure setting in. 

She’d been wrong. So wrong. Had she brought this on Donna? _No_ , some part of her realized, and it wasn’t just wishful thinking. Her timing was fortuitous because Hauhet had tweaked and influenced the world so she would have a chance, and opportunity to set things right, re-anchor the universe to the plane of reality.

Only Claire had gone and almost blown it.

No time to shower, not time to think. Claire was up feet stuffed in her boots over her pajamas. She grabbed a sports bra from the top pocket of her duffle bag, tugged it on under her sleep t-shirt and crossed the room to Charlie’s bed. “Wake up Charlie, we gotta go. Donna’s in danger,” she said.

Charlie blinked up at her blearily, caught sight of the swirling electric glow on Claire’s wrist, and sprang into action. She was wearing a close-fitting tank top and flannel pants, and just sat up, grabbed a cardigan and her athletic shoes, shoved her feet in and said, “I’m ready.”

They spent about two more minutes checking the bathroom for things they’d left behind and running the bags to the Loyale’s magically expanded hatch back, before buckling in and hitting the road. Claire filled Charlie in on what Kaia had told her in the dream.

“What if we’re too late?” Charlie asked, knuckles white where they gripped the dashboard as Claire took another turn at high speed, skidding the car through a controlled drift.

“I have to believe we’re not too late. Kaia gave me a warning for a reason. We’ve got to have time to act on it. We’re almost there---” she said, immediately regretting her choice of words.

The streetlights were out. House lights too, by the look of it. Everything within a three-block radius of Donna’s parents’ house, at least as far as Claire could tell, was pitch black. 

She cut the headlights and let the car slow to a crawl, looking carefully as she rolled through stop signs and pulled over two houses down from Donna’s.

“Argh!” A vampire, male, young-ish with pale skin and dark hair, extra sets of teeth on full display, popped up outside Charlie’s window and growl-hissed. 

Charlie screamed. It was loud, but yet, somehow her scream seemed to get cut off, lost in the night. As if the sound was dampened, absorbed, so no one could hear screams or be the wiser of the vampires’ actions. 

“Fuck,” Clair said, as she realized all their gear was in the back. In her haste to get them out of the hotel so they could make a clean get away if without losing anything expensive or irreplaceable, she hadn’t stopped long enough to actually get the vamp hunting supplies. Acting on instinct she held out her right arm, hand pointing up, palm out, as if she was reaching across Charlie towards the vampire and said, “Depulso!” It was a Harry Potter spell and the first one that came to mind, but somehow, it worked. The vampire sailed backwards through the air and out of sight before he could open the car door. “Lock!” she thought at the doors, and, well, magically, she did. 

“What the fuck was that?” Charlie asked, her voice high and panicked.

“Vampire. Also, magic. Apparently Hauhet gave me a little more skill and power than I realized I had. Say, do you wanna dive over the seat, dig out the machetes and the bottle marked dead man’s blood and pass them up to me?” Hell, she could try _summoning_ them, but she didn’t want to press her luck, or exhaust herself.

Charlie was already in motion. “Hey, there’s bullets back here that say ‘dead man’s blood,’ Do you want those?”

“Please, and grab the extra 9 mm.”

Charlie froze for a second, but then popped back over the seat holding Charlie’s spare Glock 26, a box of special bullets, three machetes, and a bottle. “I grabbed an extra machete in case Donna needs it,” she shrugged.

“Okay, you remember the gun safety lecture and shooting cans?”

Charlie nodded.

“Also realize that if we get caught we’re both extra super-duper in trouble since you’re legally, way too young to have a handgun, but then again, if DIS or anyone else catches us, I’m pretty sure that will be pretty far down the list of crimes they’ll want to charge you with. Also, I’m giving this to you so we can avoid getting dead.” As she spoke, she had unholstered her own Glock and was unloading it, bullets shooting out of the mag in quick succession and falling into the passenger footwell. She’d get them later. If there was a later. As soon as the bullets were out, she was loading the dead man’s blood bullets in. “Here load yours,” she said, passing the spare Glock back to Charlie with the other half of the box. “You shoot a vamp with one of these and it won’t kill it, but it will slow it down, make it sick, and give you time to get away. The only way to kill a vamp is to cut off its head, or set it on fire. Sunlight isn’t pleasant for them, but it won’t make them burst into flames. This isn’t Buffy.

“If one gets close, you shoot it and run away. If you can’t shoot, swing the machete at its head. Put all your weight into it. A bite won’t turn you, you have to drink their blood, so keep your mouth closed and blink if blood starts spraying around. Vampirism is pretty easily curable, but only if you get the cure before you feed for the first time, and in the meantime, it’s unpleasant as hell.” Claire stopped to tap her head. “I’ve got all of Alex and Dean’s memories of it, and frankly I’ll take being temporarily a werewolf over temporarily a vampire any day, even if the werewolf cure only has a 10% success rate, while the vampire cure is about 100%.” She realized she was rambling and cut herself off. “Any questions?”

“Shoot. Run. Slash. Run. Close my mouth. Close my eyes. Don’t get dead,” Charlie paraphrased.

“Good,” Claire said, trying to reassure them both. “And whatever you do, don’t shoot anyone living with that. These bullets will injure or kill a human just like any other bullet. Same with the machete.”

“Right, only shoot or slash the people with the lamprey eel teeth,” Charlie agreed with a shudder.

Claire nodded again, thought “unlock” at the car doors, and stepped out of the Loyale into the night. 

They closed the distance to Donna’s driveway in a little over a minute the weird muffling, sound dampening effect, aiding in their stealth (which was particularly good, because their pajamas weren’t exactly stealth-colored). They didn’t encounter any more resistance or vampires along the route. But the moment they crossed onto Donna’s driveway, that changed.

A vampire sprung up behind Charlie, fanged out, and freakishly silent. “Charlie, duck!” Claire shouted, as she began to swing with her machete. Two second slater there was a sickening (but muffled), swish-squelch, followed by a thump, thump of the vampire’s head and body each falling to the ground. 

As Claire turned, a shot rang out behind her. A vampire she hadn’t seen or heard, had been sneaking up behind her, seeming to materialize out of the shadow of Donna’s father’s car, which was parked in the driveway. Charlie had hit the vamp square in the chest, and its eyes were already bloodshot, face veiny, in response to the dead man’s blood. “Good shot,” Claire mouthed, and then bent to whack off the vamp’s head.

After that, Claire and Charlie moved in tandem, partially back-to back, weapons fanned out around them, trying to minimize the ability for the vampires to sneak up on them.

They found the first body when they reached the garage door. The door was broken and partially off its track. It looked like it had been slammed downward with some considerable force. It was crumpled up in one corner, which Claire and Charlie managed to pry up and out of the way, the real wood planks of the door snapping with little effort, so damaged were they. Of course, then they saw what had caused the damage to the door, or at least the crumpling, they both gagged. 

Donna’s father, the man Claire had watched just a couple days before as he drove to work, lay crushed under the door. Neck broken, throat ripped out, vampire bites all over his body. The door had slammed into him so hard, it had cut deep into the flesh of his abdomen, spilling his viscera. But like there was no sound, there was also, apparently no smell. 

“Don’t puke,” Claire cautioned her words barely carrying to Charlie beside her. 

Charlie nodded, and they picked their way over the corpse, careful not to step in any effluvium.

They met their first real challenge as they tried to move from the garage into the house. When Claire opened the door, it was ripped out of her hands, while a fast-moving body slammed into her from the side, throwing her off her feet and smacking her against the wall. 

She heard frantic gunfire behind her, the report of the Glock seemingly getting swallowed in the night as Charlie put one, two, three bullets into something.

Claire had the wind knocked out of her, her stomach having hit a narrow console table as her face slammed into the wall. As she tried to push back and waited for her diaphragm to start working again, she felt searing pain as vampire teeth bit into her neck from behind.

She let out an involuntary gasp of pain and reacted. Dropped her center of gravity, reached back grabbed the vamp’s wrist, popped her left hip up and bent forward, flipping the vamp onto the table so it splintered into oblivion, shattering like matchsticks. As the vamp fell, she bent over, retrieved her machete from where she’d dropped it when she slammed into the wall, and bent down to cut off the vamp’s head. 

Another gunshot echoed followed by a clatter. 

Claire whirled around, to see Charlie holding her machete like a sword while two vamps circled her. Dear god, how many did they send.

_A whole nest._ That was what Kaia had said. 

The vamp to Charlie’s left lunged, and Clair shot it, hitting it high in the back so it dropped like a stone. Severed spinal cords made it difficult for vamps to get around, at least until they healed. And with the dead man’s blood in its system, that would take a minute. 

Meanwhile Charlie had lunged forward, bringing the machete in an arcing, sweeping motion, and the second vampire’s head rolled to the floor.

Claire stopped to cut off the head of the vamp she’d shot and bent to retrieve Charlie’s gun. 

“Hey, Charlie, here,” she said softly once she was close enough to Charlie to be confident the sound would carry.

Charlie jumped. And when she turned to face Claire, her eyes were wide and haunted. But she reached out and took the gun, careful to keep the muzzle pointed down and away, her finger out of the trigger guard. Good. Even at 15, Claire was one hell of a resilient fighter. “I’ve never killed anyone before. But, then again, I just killed a monster with a sword, and it was kind of like Warcraft, or maybe Zelda, or something right out of D&D, so it was kind of awesome, while also being terrifying, and oh my god, why am I shaking?”

“Adrenaline,” Claire explained. “Come on,” she nodded towards the hallway. 

They dispatched another vamp that tried to attack from the doorway to the kitchen, Claire shooting, Charlie decapitating. And then another two vamps that ambushed them from the dark depths of the hall bathroom, Claire swinging her machete and hitting both while physically pulling Charlie away from the nearer of the two vampires, who was trying to bite her. 

Claire wasn’t sure where she was going, she was just following a feeling. Her wrist throbbed in time with her heartbeat, and as she moved deeper into the house, her wrist the throbbing in her tattoo was more intense. She was also getting a little woozy, which meant the vamp who bit her had done more damage than she’d thought. No time to worry about that now.

As they neared the end of the hallway, where an addition joined the original house, forming almost a ‘t’ in the hallway, her phone buzzed. She couldn’t tell if it was actually ringing, but it buzzed again, and she pulled it out of her pocket. A number that looked familiar, but wasn’t saved as a contact, showed on the caller ID. She flipped open the phone and said, “Hello?”

“Claire?” came a broken, sobbing voice over the line. It was _Donna_ she realized. “I’m sorry to call you so early, but I need help. Something’s really wrong. She keeps trying to kill me. Oh god!” she screamed, and the report of a rifle echoed over the phone.

In her other ear, she could just make out the gunshot, coming from her left. She turned down the hallway and did her best to get Donna talking again. “Donna?” she said, “I’m here. Just hang on, where are you?”

“I’m at home. You have my address?” Donna stammered, “Oh god, she’s moving again.”

“I’m at your house. I just need to know where to go.”

“F-formal dining room. It’s at the back of the house, end of the hallway. Please stay away!” she added shouting to whomever or whatever was after her. 

Claire picked up the pace, Charlie following on her heels. There was a door up ahead, it was open. Claire skidded inside, and screeched to a halt, throwing her arm out and stopping Charlie in her tracks. 

The room looked like a bomb had hit it. There was blood everywhere. 

Donna was at the back of a room, crouched in an open closet door. Beyond her, Claire could just make out a large room (for a closet) with a large gun safe. The safe was open, weapons and ammo strewn all over the floor. Donna had the Winchester Model 70 tucked to her shoulder with a cordless wall phone awkwardly perched on her other shoulder. Between Claire and Charlie was the body of a blonde woman, Donna’s mother if she had to guess. The body was covered in bite marks and gunshot wounds. And it was moving, eyes snapping open again as it tried to sit up and turn towards Claire and Charlie. Only the vampire couldn’t move much, because Donna had knocked an entire, massive china cabinet onto it. Broken heirloom china was strewn all over the room, pieces of plates and tea sets crunching under their feet as they moved, the feel of it through her boots stomach turning even if she couldn’t hear the sound it made.

“She won’t, she won’t stay down. She keeps trying to bite me,” Donna sobbed. 

As Claire got closer, she could see tooth marks and a large gash on one of Donna’s forearms. She’d been bitten alright and would probably need stitches.

“I am so, so sorry,” Claire murmured. “If I’d known you were in danger, I never would have left. I just, I had no idea. You seemed, you didn’t know anything,” Claire was almost talking to herself. “How did you know to call me?” she asked.

“Something about your tattoo made me feel safe. And the way you asked questions. I could tell you were trying to get at something, but I couldn’t tell what. Then I saw something with too many teeth choosing down on Mr. Jenkins next door, and I realized that must have been the kind of thing you were trying to get at.” Donna half laughed, half sobbed. 

Claire turned her attention back to the struggling vampire. “Did she bite you?” she asked.

“Several times. Is she a vampire?” Donna asked.

“Yes,” Claire said, looking back over her shoulder at Charlie. “I’m sorry, she fed on your blood, there’s no way I can save her now. But I can make sure she doesn’t suffer, and she can’t hurt you again.”

Behind her Donna broke into sobs. 

Claire turned to try to comfort her, but as she stepped closer, Donna’s nostril’s flared and she strained towards Claire. _Shit._

That’s when she noticed the blood around her mouth.

“Donna, did your mom bleed on you? Make you drink her blood?” Claire asked, taking a step back.

“After the third time she bit me, she bit herself, her arm, and forced it into my mouth until I choked. I tried not to swallow, but she just kept bleeding in me. It was disgusting,” she gave a full body shudder.

“Did you drink anyone else’s blood? Your dad’s maybe?” Claire asked, praying they weren’t fucked because Donna was a vampire.

“Dad’s dead?” she asked her voice breaking. “I was hoping—he made a run for the driveway, I hoped he’d gotten away.” Donna sounded devastated, and Claire felt like an ass.

“Okay, I’m going to be 100% honest with you. You are turning into a vampire, and I am bleeding like crazy, and right now, my blood smells like it’s the best meal ever. I can save you, keep you from becoming a vampire, but only if you don’t drink any blood. Not mine, not Charlie’s, no one’s, you understand?” She gestured towards Charlie. “This is Charlie, by the way,” she’s going to help you get up, grab what weapons and ammo you can, and get moving. We’ll head outside and try to avoid any more vampires along the way, okay?” To Charlie, Claire added, “You’ve got to talk her down, keep a hold of her hands, and do not let her bite you. I can’t go near her, because chances are, I’d bleed on her and we’d be fucked, so just stay alert.”

Charlie nodded and slowly began to approach Donna, stepping over the broken glassware. 

Claire needed to kill the vampire who was formerly Donna’s mother and collect enough of her blood to cook up a batch of the cure. But what to put it in? In her haste, she’d grabbed the bottle of dead man’s blood, but no vials, bottles, or test tubes. Spying an unbroken water glass lying in the detritus that had scattered from the china cabinet, she set to work, keeping her body between Donna and the vampire at all times. A quick slash with the machete and the vampire was dead, her blood pooling into the glass. 

She straightened up, turned to face them, and found Charlie had a very wobbly looking Donna on her feet. Donna was clutching the Model 70, while Charlie had a bandolier, two shotguns and a newer model Winchester 70, hanging from slings across her body and a Colt 1911 complete with shoulder holster, kind of draped over her arm. 

“You guys ready? Watch your step,” Claire ordered.

They didn’t encounter any more vamps on their way out. Claire stopped in the kitchen to scrounge plastic wrap and a rubber band to secure the precious vampire blood. Donna managed to not bite anyone as they picked their way out of the house. 

Charlie told Donna to close her eyes when they went through the garage and down the driveway. 

Now that they were outside, and it was closer to dawn, the sound seemed to be coming back ever so slight. But now Claire could also see the bodies. The vampires had wreaked havoc on at least the entire block. There were three bodies in their driveways and one dangling haphazardly from a second story window. It was horrifying, nauseating.

Donna was moaning slightly as they reached the Loyale, the first rosy fingers of dawn breaking on the horizon. 

“Who would do something like this? The Thule?” Charlie asked. 

Claire shook her head. “I don’t know. This isn’t really their style. They like undead things, sure, but they’re really more about necromancy, killing Rabbis, and trying to resurrect Hitler. You know, when they’re not doing time travel or breaking the world. Also, since they’re inside the DIS, if they set this up, wouldn’t this place already be crawling with DIS?”

“Maybe someone wanted to bring the DIS’s attention to Donna? Or to us?” Charlie asked

Claire had a sobering thought. “It could be the British Men of Letters. This kind of thing, making deals with vampires, using humans as cannon fodder, they’ve done stuff like that before, or at least, they will have done it, on my world. Maybe they’re trying to lure the Thule here?”

“Then we’d better get out of here, before the BMOL or the Thule pick us up,” Charlie added with a grunt as she propped Donna’s listless form against the rear driver’s-side door of the Loyale.

“Okay, what now?”

Claire regarded Charlie and Donna. Donna was deep into her transition now and looked really ill. Her eyes were blood shot, and Claire knew if she lifted Donna’s lip, she’d already have the second set of teeth.

“I need a safe space to make and administer the cure. Somewhere we can hole up for at least a few days. The recovery isn’t pretty, and Donna won’t be mobile until it’s done. I think we can go to one of the hunting or wilderness cabins up north. I’ve got all the ingredients I need. We just need to get Donna there.”

The conversation that followed wasn’t fun. Claire let donna know what they were doing, but because she was bleeding, Charlie had to do all the work. They settled on zip-tying and handcuffing Donna’s hands, handcuffing her feet, putting three layers of duct tape over her mouth (after confirming she could breathe through her nose) and, finally, hitting her with the stun gun.

Then Claire got in the driver’s seat, and Charlie in the passenger seat, stun gun in hand, body turned towards the back seat to watch over Donna with instructions to stun her again if she woke.

Claire stopped at a rest stop half an hour north of town. She rummaged in the hatch back and retrieved the quickclot, suture kit, steri-strips, antibiotic ointment, oral antibiotics, disinfecting wipes, and a long sweater coat. She washed up as best she could, finding countless little cuts and nicks that stung in the water when the soap hit them. She poured the quick clot on her neck wound out of desperation—she needed it to stop bleeding, couldn’t go to a hospital, and didn’t have the time or resources to train Charlie on this on the fly. 

After emptying the contents of her stomach into the toilet twice from the sheer agony of the clotting agent. She set about thoroughly disinfecting the vampire bite and closing the wounds as best she could with steri-strips. She put in two sutures where she could reach. She’d need more, but she’d have to get Charlie’s help for those. Then she downed the antibiotics, applied a bandage, and fixed her long hair so it covered the wound. Satisfied no more blood was showing, she pulled n her sweater coat and belted it, flipping the collar up high to better cover her neck.

It looked a little ridiculous for being almost summer, but it would have to do.

When she got back to the car, Charlie had stunned Donna again, and they were back on their way.

She drove northwest for another two and a half hours, until she reached Lake of the Woods. At the third cabins rental place she came across, there was a vacancy. Checking her reflection in the rearview mirror to make sure she didn’t look like she’d just killed an entire vampire nest, she got out, went to the front desk, and sweet talked the very groggy at 8:30 a.m. desk clerk into renting her their most remote cabin for the next two weeks. She spun a tale about their reservation being screwed up and driving around trying to find anyone with a vacancy. She and her sisters were celebrating the youngest’s high school graduation, and now they were all exhausted and frustrated, and could really use a place to sleep and take a hot shower before they were at each other’s throats.

The desk clerk bought it right up, let her pay cash, and gave her the map and the key without too much fuss. 

Claire was gracious, tipped well—but not too well-and tried to be as un-memorable as possible.

When she got back to the car. Charlie was trying to appear relaxed, while Donna, horizontal in the back seat, thrashed around.

It took 15 minutes to get to the cabin and another 35 for Claire to finish a batch of the cure. With Charlie’s help, they got Donna into the bathroom and seated on the toilet, the large kitchen trash can, lined with a fresh bag, in front of her.

Charlie ripped the tape off Donna’s mouth, and surged up, chasing after Charlie’s fingers, vampire teeth gnashing. 

“I can cure you, okay. Just hang on,” Claire reiterated. Then, using a funnel she kept in her car for exactly this purpose, poured the cure down Donna’s throat. 

It took a moment, but Donna began vomiting and didn’t stop for 5 minutes. Claire was pretty horrified at how much blood the vampire had managed to force feed her. After the vomiting stopped, Donna passed out. Then Claire and Charlie got her cleaned up in changed into a fresh pair of Claire’s pajamas.

It took another two hours before Claire’s wound was stitched and bandaged, the expelled vampire blood was disposed of (burned in the fire pit), and both Charlie and Claire were showered and changed.

Claire and Charlie slept until that evening. Getting up to eat some granola bars and shower again. 

Donna didn’t wake for two days.

Claire dreamed about her sisters, and chatted with Kaia twice, thanking her thoroughly for the warning.

At that point, Donna got the full song and dance about Claire’s history, even touching the tattoo to see who she’d been in the other world. There were a lot of tears as Donna was in shock and mourning. But by the end of the two weeks, everyone seemed regrouped and stable enough to move.

They couldn’t stay there any longer. Claire felt the need to move like an itch between her shoulder blades. People were looking for them. Donna would be a suspect in the murders of her parents and a whole hell of a lot of other people. They needed to get away, far away, and get back on track with fulfilling the mission. They’d come close to losing. Claire couldn’t let it happen again.


	8. Chapter 8: On the Road Again

**Chapter 8: On the Road Again**

The reason for the itchy feeling between Claire’s shoulder blades became apparent about an hour and a half after they left Lake of the Woods.

Donna and Charlie were having a debate about what exactly DIS _did_. Claire and Charlie had both figured out the Thule Society had infiltrated DIS, but neither of them knew if it was more of a sparse infiltration or if the Thule were the driving force behind the whole department. 

Claire, personally, thought it was a HYDRA-in-S.H.I.E.L.D., situation, but of course Donna just stared at her like she was speaking Greek and Charlie said she understood the words, but not in that context. A little over two months in a new universe and she was already hating the lack of familiar pop culture touchstones.

The big DIS debate was whether DIS actually did any of the work it _said_ it did—a long-term solution (as opposed to FEMA) to some of the unexplained disasters and internal terrorist attacks of the past five-plus years that assisted with relocations, infrastructure replacement and redevelopment, administration in places where local governments had been essentially wiped out, streamlined business loans for redevelopment, and the like—or if they were really just rounding people up for Nazi Necromancer experimentation.

They stopped at a roadside diner in one of the small towns that dotted northern Minnesota for some lunch. They hadn’t even finished their sandwiches when two black SUVs came streaming into the parking lot, disgorging feds in suits. 

No time to run, Claire stayed put and tried to appear ignorant. Nothing to see here, just a few sisters out for a summer adventure. She reassured Charlie quietly that they’d all get out of there.

Of course, the DIS agents weren’t after Charlie. They were after Claire. Lucky for Claire, one of the DIS agents had been a prominent Thule member in her home universe. Sam and Dean’s memories of the guy rushed through her mind.

“So, Hans,” Claire started, “Do your colleagues know who, or rather what, you are?” she asked.

Hans’s partner, a clean-cut looking guy with dark brown hair, who seemed far more, relaxed than Hans shot Hans a particularly confused look.

“It does not matter. After all, we all want the same thing here,” Hans protested.

“That’s funny, because here I thought they were into helping people, or maybe stopping terrorism, whereas you’re all about resurrecting Hitler, using necromancy to make super soldiers, and oh, yeah, breaking time.” She turned to Hans’s partner. “Did you know this whole mess is his fault? Or rather it’s 50% his true organization’s fault. The Thule Society, look it up. They did Hitler’s black ops occult research back in the day, and Hans here, he and the Furher were old buddies. Only now, they got into a big fight about time travel with some cranky British magicians—who like to make little kids murder each other, by the way—and the British magicians and Hans’s boys got into a time travel fight and broke the universe. But hey, that’s why I’m here, so don’t worry about it.”

Hans’s partner was looking at Claire like she’d grown a second head, until he realized how _Hans_ was reacting. Which was to say, more or less foaming at the mouth, taking to heart everything Claire said.

“Well, I do admit we have hit a bit of a snag,” Hans admitted.

“Oh really, me fessing up to your partner here?”

“No, what _are_ you? You do not exist. Yet you show up everywhere, thwarting our plans. Those vampires in Hibbing. That was a message for us, but you got there first!”

“I’m pretty sure the Brits just wanted to turn Donna into a vampire present. Might not have gone so well for you, maybe you should say ‘thank you’?” Claire suggested sarcastically.

She glanced around the restaurant. There were two other families there, both of them more or less cowering in their booths. In _her_ universe, this would be a prime opportunity for viral video. Everything Claire and Hans said would be already on YouTube or Instagram right now, probably trending on Twitter. 

Of course, this universe didn’t have ubiquitous video cameras in everyone’s phone, and there wasn’t even cell signal this far out in the woods. 

So, instead, the other patrons just looked baffled.

At that moment, the power went out.

Now that got Claire’s hackles up. Power outage could be part of the Thule/DIS tactics, or it could be a demon attack. Or any number of other no good, very bad things.

“Okay, what’s going on?” she asked, standing and putting herself between Donna and Charlie and the two DIS agents. It was only then that she realized the patrons were all frozen. Every single one of them… she glanced over her shoulder, Donna and Charlie too. “Nuh-uh, temporal magic doesn’t work in this universe, not since you and your Brit buddies broke time.”

This time Hans’s partner took the lead. “You see, we were fully informed of our colleagues’ origins, while some in our ranks had concerns, the whole magitech enterprise, these nifty little tools, that get the job done like nothing else, they make it all worth it. We don’t care if our colleagues contributed to the current state of affairs. That was accidental, and out of all the parties, they’re the only ones trying to fix things. They’re particularly interested in getting to the bottom of what happened. Exactly how and why did the magic react that way and how do we get this world back on track, while steering it in a mutually beneficial direction, of course.” 

Claire’s assessment of not-Hans did a 180. Hans was just, typical Thule inner circle. His partner was, human, complicit, deranged. 

“We thought we had a handle on the situation. Then you showed up. Claire Novak. Only, you don’t exist. There was a Claire Novak, but she died—”

“In February 1998, at the age of two months. You know _how_ she died, don’t you,” Claire countered, glancing meaningfully at Hans.

“That doesn’t interest us. What does is what you are and how you are here. Were you involved with the attacks five years ago?”

“Attacks? That was spell back fire, temporal collapse, and oh yeah, opportunistic demons, and angels. Besides, as you pointed out, your Claire Novak wasn’t born five years ago, and I wasn’t in your universe until a little over two months ago,” Claire countered, getting increasingly frustrated.

Donna and Charlie were still frozen. Only she and the two agents were moving, and she didn’t understand why. She could carry Donna or Charlie, but she couldn’t move both of them, and dodge two agents.

“Ms. Novak, you can continue spewing nonsense, or you can cooperate. I’m afraid there’s not much you can do to help Celeste Middleton here, I mean, we might not even get to play with her for very long. After all, she hacked the CIA when she was twelve! But your friend Donna Hanscum here. Well, right now she’s just a missing person. Suspected kidnapping, likely traumatized. But if you don’t play ball, we can very easily turn her from the sole survivor of that vampire massacre to the premeditated monster whose devotion to her demonic faith led her to commit savage ritualistic murders via beheading and exsanguination, of over 15 people, including her own parents.

“So you do believe in vampires,” Claire responded.

“Of course not,” not-Hans said sarcastically.

“What _is_ going on here? Why are they all frozen, and we’re not? If this isn’t temporal magic—”

“It’s a selective paralysis field, one of the many tools we have at our disposal to make sure we have full cooperation. You were making a scene. We turn off your audience and put you at a disadvantage. We want to talk, so you are not frozen. You try to run, and we freeze you just like your friends, and then we take you out of here and with a little suggestion, the other patrons never remember you, or we, were here.” 

“Okay, so I’m here for the duration,” she said, stalling. “But I gotta admit, I am curious, how did you find us?” 

It was Hans’s turn to pontificate. He went into a long monologue about how the Thule had been been getting tips, seeing prophecies about enemy magic users. Those who would destroy the Thule’s goals. Sam Winchester, he was a kid, but his activity always made him very attractive. He’s just too damn hard to find. Celeste Middleton, only she’s excellent at covering her tracks, which makes her hard to find. Donna Hanscum. There were others, the names still too foggy, but the details would come.

They were _scrying_. It wasn’t quite like Hauhet had thought. The Thule weren’t cut off from their future knowledge, the temporal collapse just had them turning to new methods of finding out the future. Rather than sending someone ahead to report back, they picked through the threads and currents of possible tomorrows looking for movers and shakers.

At least Dean wasn’t on the list yet, or Bobby, or Jody, or Cas. 

Claire looked to Donna and Charlie, they looked terrified, but not cowed. She could see awareness returning to them as the paralysis field wore off. She refused to give in to the Thule/DIS display. “You’ve got nothing to hold me on, and no proof any of us are who you say you think we are. You don’t want us dead, because you want to interrogate us, and we need to be alive for that. So why don’t you really go, before you look bad to whatever backup is coming when they find out you roughed up a bunch of kids?”

Not-Hans looked contemplative at this, but Hans was having none of it. He grabbed the paralysis field controller. “Lucky for us, I can just freeze everyone and sort it out elsewhere. He adjusted the device, and Donna, Charlie, re froze as did not-Hans. But not Claire.

Hans looked at her in shock.

Charlie looked down at the tattoo writhing on her wrist; it was starting to glow. 

“What are you?!” Hans asked again, sounding both fascinated and horrified. He adjusted the device again, and again, to no avail. 

Claire took two steps toward him and drew her angel blade. “Like I said before, I’m not _of_ this world. Your magic holds no sway over me.” 

She lunged. He reared back. She smacked his arm out of the way with the blade, while tackling him for the remote. She wasn’t sure how it worked, but now Hans was frozen too. The only problem was, how to undo it.

After two minutes of poking no buttons to no avail she gave up. That prickling feeling was building again. Their backup was coming. She grabbed the handcuffs of the two agents and restrained them, cuffed together, one of each man’s hands in each set of cuffs, crisscrossed behind them. She then gagged each with their tie, held the controller up high, and smashed it against the concrete floor. As she had hoped the field broke and everyone came too. Of course, now the other patrons were screaming. 

“Donna, Charlie, let’s go. I’ll explain the rest in the car,” Claire explained. 

They were in the Loyale and on their way towards Minneapolis before the DIS backup arrived.

As they watched the caravan of black SUVs streaming by, Charlie asked what happened.

Claire said, honestly, that she didn’t know.

~~~

“We’ve been talking,” Donna said, approaching Claire where she was holed up in the corner of the motel room. They were at an Extended Stay America on the outskirts of St. Paul. It was only a little over three hours from Hibbing, and Claire itched with the need to get as far away from that place as possible, but Donna was shaken, and Claire and Charlie were both adjusting, so staying somewhere almost _normal_ and not too far away, seemed like the best idea.

“That’s good, are you and Charlie getting to know each other?” Claire asked, only half looking up as she flipped through another page of notes. She was reviewing the research she’d managed to pull up on rudimentary websites and public brochures about the DIS and cross referencing it with everything Charlie had been able to pull up from her on the dark web. The smiling faces and promises of _We’re here to help_ on each of the fakey-fake official pamphlets was making her gag.

“Charlie’s awesome,” Donna replied, “But that’s not what we were talking about.”

Something in Donna’s tone brought Claire up short. She _knew_ that tone. Had been on the receiving end of it once or twice (or more) before in her universe. She looked up, found Donna staring at her with concern.

Donna reached out and gently rested her left hand on Claire’s right, her thumb hovering millimeters from the tattoo. “You need to go after the rest of your family.”

“You are my family,” Claire murmured, then cringed. Because she was still mostly a stranger to Donna. And from Donna’s point of view was a stranger she’d met under false pretenses who had brought supernatural hell down upon her, upended her life, destroyed her family… “I’m sorry,” Claire retreated hastily, trying to jerk her hand out of Donna’s grip, but Donna held on. “I mean I knew a version of you who was family—”

“Hold it right there, missy,” Donna interrupted, holding out her other hand in the universal sign for “stop.” “I don’t blame you for what happened. I know you didn’t draw those vamps to me. You just made sure I lived to fight another day. And you did it with all this weird baggage, at least as much as mine. I know it can’t be easy. I’ve talked Charlie, and you’re good people, like a fun big sis.”

Claire smiled. Donna was so cute when she was flustered like this, and there went that ghost of attraction—totally, completely impossibly misplaced attraction, but yeah, it was still there, making Claire feel shitty and pervy and—-

“I can see the wheels spinning in your head. Whatever you’re thinking, no, just no,” Donna squeezed her hand reassuringly. “I meant it when I said thank you for coming back for me. I was in over my head, and without you, I’d be dead or a vampire, or in DIS custody, and those are all very, very bad things. I’ve known this world was wrong for a while. Could feel it in my bones. I just thought I was crazy, or oversensitive, or imagining things, but you’ve finally showed me _how_ and why it was wrong, and I know I’m not crazy. And I am really, really looking forward to getting to know you someday under less, uh, fudged up circumstances.”

Donna’s avoidance of profanity brought a smile to Claire’s face. It was so familiar, it was almost like having _her_ Donna back.

“But what I’m saying, what Charlie and I both think, is we know you’re avoiding people. This Jody, and Cas or Jimmy, the angel guy with your dad or a version of your dad. You’ve been here for almost two months now, right? It’s time to act. Just rip it off like a Band-Aid. Pick one, and we’ll go there. We’ve got your back.”

Claire blinked slowly, blinked again, surprised to find her cheeks wet. What Donna was saying was true. She looked over at Charlie who was perched on the edge of the bed farthest from the door, laptop propped haphazardly on her lap with her ever-growing collection of peripherals spread around her, some on the bed, others on the bedside table. Charlie smiled, blushed, and hid her head behind a wave of loose red hair in a maneuver that was almost shy. Shit. She was making Charlie stressed out about this. 

“I don’t know how they’re going to take it,” Claire admitted. 

“And you’re not sure how you’re going to take it,” Donna agreed. “We get it. But we don’t want the world to end any more than you do, so let’s do this. Pick a person and we’ll go there. You’re not alone.”

“Okay,” Claire nodded again. She thought about it for a minute, but to be honest, she’d made this decision long ago. Jody and Bobby would need to be collected together, for lack of a better word, and Bobby would take the whole “angel” thing, if she had some tangible proof. Aloud she said, “Pontiac, Pontiac, Illinois, we’re headed for Castiel.”

~~~

Claire wasn’t sure what she had expected. But Cas, when she found him, was not wearing the familiar suit, white button up, tie, and trench coat. He wasn’t even wearing dress shoes. He certainly wasn’t doing anything angelic.

Wearing a faded cornflower blue pull-over sweater with a quarter zip at the neck over a black t-shirt, faded relaxed jeans, and tan work boots, Castiel stood, before a small, polished grave marker over a double grave. He was holding a bouquet of purple hyacinths and asphodel and inscription on the headstone read “Amelia and Claire Novak, beloved wife and daughter, taken far too soon. _May angels speed you to your eternal rest._ ”

Part of Claire wanted to make a crack about the quote being a little too on-the-nose, but her usual gallows humor escaped her. The sky was blue, the early morning sun was bright and just a little warm, promising a hint of summer as the late June day progressed, birds were chirping, and the world was otherwise silent. Charlie and Donna were both wearing black—their choice, not hers—and hanging back at the Loyale. And standing before her was her father. 

From her point of view, it had been over a decade since he died, longer since she’d had any meaningful contact with him. Cas, on the other hand, she’d seen all the time and his loss in the destruction of her world still stung like an open wound and probably always would. But this man before her, was neither Jimmy Novak, beloved father, nor Castiel, angel rebel extraordinaire. 

“Cas,” she said, voice barely more than a whisper.

He looked up and met her eyes. The expression was confused, shocked, joyous, wary.

“Claire?” a voice that sounded like Jimmy, not Cas, responded.

“Dad?” She asked, blinking back tears. Without thinking, she darted across the row of graves between them, and fell into her father’s arms. Her arms encircled him, pulling tight. For a moment he hugged her, really hugged her with unconditional love and fatherly affection she hadn’t felt from him since he started hearing angels. But after a couple of heartbeats he stiffened, and the hug went awkward. Claire pulled back. “Cas?” she asked again.

Jimmy/Cas’s face was almost comically conflicted. He spoke again, this time the voice was 100% Cas, deep, gruff, and so stodgy it sounded like the stick up his ass would pop out his mouth if he showed any enthusiasm. “Claire Novak has been dead for over two years. Had she lived, she would have been two years, seven months, three weeks, and one day old. You are not James Novak’s daughter.”

“I’m not this Jimmy Novak’s daughter,” Claire countered. “I’m from a different universe, from the future from your perspective. But I am the daughter of my universe’s James and Amelia Novak.”

Cas’s forehead scrunched up in a bewildered scowl. “Time travel has been impossible since April 2nd, 1995.”

“Impossible in this universe, but I’m not from here, and I didn’t time travel in the way you are thinking.” Claire did her best to smile. “Maybe we can go somewhere to talk? I need your help, Jimmy’s too.”

Castiel looked around suspiciously, as if he expected someone to be lurking in the shadows, crouched behind a headstone, or hiding under a tree. When he was apparently satisfied, he made an awkward “lead the way,” gesture, and Claire led him back to the car.

When they reached the Loyale, Donna and Charlie were looking particularly guilty and having very obviously been spying or eavesdropping—not that they could have heard much from half a football field away. They both scrambled into the back seats and shut the doors. 

Claire unlocked the front passenger door with her key and gestured to Cas.

Cas gripped the door, ever suspicious, and paused. “There is magic on this vehicle. Spells, I do not recognize… and yet the protective markings on the door are in Enochian—how did—”

“We can either discuss this out in the open and risk someone listening in, or you can trust me for five minutes while we head to Jimmy’s favorite diner and enjoy a burger,” Claire said softly.

Cas frowned at her, but his control seemed to slip as his body language shifted to Jimmy’s. “I would like that,” Jimmy answered.

Claire nodded, got in the car, and started for the diner. The Old Log Cabin Inn wasn’t that close to the cemetery so the drive took a good 20 minutes, during which the car was almost silent.

Almost, because after ten minutes someone—she was pretty sure it was Charlie—reached between the seats towards the radio, and someone else—definitely Donna—slapped their hand out of the way. There was an aborted whispered argument she was certain was accompanied with glares and raised eyebrows, before the silence settled in again. 

As Claire parked, Cas spoke up, “You know, I don’t need to eat.”

“Oh, a contraction, Jimmy must be growing on you.”

“That’s not—” Cas broke off.

“Relax. I know you don’t need to eat, but Jimmy loves this place, or at least my dad did, and since he’s still in your vessel with you, I figured this would be a treat for him.”

Cas didn’t talk up again until they were inside and seated in a booth. Donna and Charlie were on the inside, Donna next to Claire and Charlie next to Cas, while Claire faced the door, and Cas faced her. Once they were equipped with coffee—even Charlie, who had apparently started mainlining the stuff even when her parents were still alive—and the waitress had taken their orders, Claire ordering her dad’s favorite for Cas, Cas finally spoke. “I don’t understand who you are or what is going on,” he admitted.

“Eat your chicken fried steak,” Claire commented as the waitress put the plates down in front of them. Jimmy Novak’s favorite was always chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and gravy and a side of hashbrown casserole. Claire looked down at her skillet and figured out what to say. She’d forgotten how much less avocado there was on everything back at the turn of the century. Satisfied Cas was letting Jimmy enjoy his favorite (and hoping it was _this_ Jimmy’s favorite too), while Charlie and Donna dug into their respective pancake towers, she continued. “You can feel your grace in me.” It was a statement.

Cas set down his knife and fork. “It is strangely disconcerting as I am confident I have never had you as my vessel.” 

“In my world, ten years from now, you did,” Claire said. She took a long sip from her water glass, set it down, and leaned back. “So, what’s the deal with you and Jimmy. I mean, I know why he said ‘yes,’ but do you two have some kind of timeshare going on? Because I’ve never seen an arrangement like this…” she trailed off, “although, come to think of it, I’m pretty sure you had a friend, Benjamin, who was… I guess you could say partnered with his vessel.”

“How do you know Benjamin?” Cas asked jostling the table as he leaned forward.

Claire steadied her wobbling coffee cup, as her water glass sloshed a little on the table. 

“All you have to do is touch the tattoo, and you’ll have your answers,” she said, holding her right wrist out towards Cas.

He looked at her skeptically, but a wave of _Jimmy_ washed through him, and he moved, gripping her wrist with both hands.

The connection was instantaneous. Claire froze in the moment along with Cas, and she could see the images streaming through his mind, the knowledge, truth. She still wasn’t sure exactly how the tattoo worked. It seemed like she could _influence_ it, for example getting the download to skim over some of the more gruesome things that happened to both Cas and Jimmy to make it easier on her father, who she was pretty sure was getting the same mental film reel as his occupying angel, but she couldn’t control it. The tattoo reacted to people, some more than others, and Cas more than anyone she had encountered before. It wasn’t that he had control over the tattoo, it felt more like the tattoo knew he could both take more and would need more information to be convinced, so it gave him more of the details, details Hauhet had painstakingly imparted in Claire, but that she hadn’t shared with everyone else. The tattoo, with Claire’s guidance, let Cas see the end, and beyond the end, the multiverse being wiped away to nothing, to an ocean of unreality, what had existed before time. She let him see the pains and failures along the route, let him _feel_ his connection to Dean, and all the times he felt he’d failed Dean, let him see Jimmy and Claire’s relationship, let him see her pain, her sisters injured and disappeared in their little bubble outside of spacetime.

When the fastforward trip down (future, alternate) memory lane came to a conclusion, Cas let go, and Claire let out a deep sigh.

“I feel I must apologize for my counterpart’s attempts to rule—” Cas broke off.

Claire just shrugged. “Hardly the worst thing anyone ever did. Also, it’s not going to happen here. The way the Thule Society and the BMOL—sorry, the British Men of Letters—broke time even if we get this universe anchored back in its proper place things have changed enough that the events that brought that about literally cannot happen. So don’t worry about it.”

“Still, I was friends with a demon,” Cas shuddered.

“Lots of demons,” Claire countered, “and yeah, while most of them are body stealing assholes bent on destruction, a some of them are pretty decent, and most of them aren’t nearly as big dicks as angels.”

Two tables away, someone must have heard them, and a scandalized looking older white woman with permed frosted hair turned to fix Claire with a glare that could have stripped paint. Claire just smiled, saluted the busybody with her coffee cup, and turned her attention back to Cas.

Only it was Jimmy looking back at her. “You really are my daughter, grown up.”

“A version of her.”

“How old are you?” he asked?

“Well, my world ended on May 4th, 2021, so I was 23. I came back here when it was almost the same date, just 21 years earlier, so as long as you don’t count whatever time I was in infinity with Hauhet, which I don’t since there was literally no time there and I didn’t age, then I’m still 23.”

“I’m sorry, you lost me so young. I—I would give anything to keep you safe, to be there for you. It’s my biggest failure—”

This time Claire reached out and took both of Jimmy’s hands in her own. “It wasn’t your fault. There was nothing you could have done.” 

“If I hadn’t gone to the store—” Jimmy regretted aloud. 

Claire could see it now, Jimmy had gone to the store to get ice cream for his wife and diapers for his baby daughter. He was only gone about 15 minutes, but when he came back the door was smashed in, the lights were out on his block, and Amelia was dead at the bottom of the stairs, her eyes blank, neck broken, surrounded by a pool of blood. There was something written on the wall, he couldn’t make it out, but Claire could—partially completed angel sigils—he’d followed the blood trail up the stairs desperate, terrified, and then, his heart stopped, breath stolen, as he saw baby Claire still in her crib, surrounded by blood. At that moment something struck him, and he passed out. When he came to, he was sobbing, head ringing, and a tremendous echoing noise filled the air. A messenger from God asking him to say ‘yes.’ If he would lend his body to the cause, he would have purpose, the angels would stop those who had taken his wife and daughter from him. And if he said no… well, the sirens outside meant the police were there, and wouldn’t he make a nice suspect? He’d said yes, and as he stood to accept Castiel into his body, he looked down at the strange ring on the floor where it had fallen beside Claire’s crib.

“There wasn’t anything you could have done, because the Thule Society killed Claire and Amelia, and they would have killed you too, but the angels used it as an opportunity to get Cas his perfect host.”

Betrayal flashed across Jimmy’s face, while blue light flashed in his eyes, suggesting Cas was trying to assert control.

“Cas didn’t know, Jimmy. He didn’t know his superiors allowed the Thule Society to find you, that Cas was dispatched to intercede just late enough to save you, but not take away your motivation. He suspected, eventually, but he didn’t know until now.”

“Who, what is the Thule Society?” Jimmy stammered.

“Nazi necromancers who are partially responsible for breaking time. Of course, before they broke time they were really good at long-range, long-term planning, prophecies, scrying, and the like, so that’s how they knew who you were.” Claire squeezed Jimmy’s hands and let go. “You were always going to say ‘yes,’ Jimmy. Because deep down a part of you has always believed, very devoutly, and you see the best in people, you believe the best of angels. It’s a very hopeful way of living. Rest assured Claire and Amelia are in heaven, and in this universe, that should be a pretty nice place. Most of the stuff we did to break it where I came from can’t happen now. So they’ll be happy and safe and at peace.” Claire almost couldn’t believe she was saying something nice about heaven or angels, but it was what Jimmy needed to hear. And it was true, at least from a certain point of view. And if that point of view made Jimmy’s loss a little easier to shoulder, she couldn’t deny him the comfort it provided.

Jimmy blinked back tears, smiled, and relaxed. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, Cas was staring back at her. 

“I could use your help,” Claire said, her voice firm but soft.

“You said—”

“I know where Sam Winchester is, but I need your help to get him, so we can avoid the end of the world.”

Cas’s fork clattered to his plate. He leaned over the table and lowered his voice, which in Cas’s grumbly timbre was actually more difficult to understand. “No one knows where Sam Winchester is. He has been lost almost since the fracture.”

“The fracture?” Charlie asked, incredulous.

“The term the angelic host uses to describe the event that disabled our ability to travel through time as well as our abilities to see destinies, trace past and future events, and influence the outcome. We have been, flying blind, I believe is the term, since April 2nd, 1995.” Cas turned back to Claire, “I cannot thank you enough, we will owe you a debt for helping to solve this mystery.”

“Whoah, whoah, whoah, hold on, buster,” Claire objected. “If the ‘we’ in your little expression of gratitude means angelic kind, you need to put on the brakes. This isn’t information you can share on angel radio.” She leaned forward. “You saw what I am talking about. The end of everything. Seven people—one of them an angel, you—and me, who have to work together to keep everything that has ever existed in every version of reality from being permanently wiped out. One of those people is Sam, and while I am asking for your help in getting him on board, you cannot, absolutely cannot share any of this information with your boss. Zachariah only cares about one thing, the apocalypse. He doesn’t believe me, and he certainly doesn’t care that if he gets his way, humanity will be wiped out, and _then_ every universe ever will permanently die.”

Cas frowned again, “I saw the version of me you know. He was… rebellious, hard-headed, determined, resilient, defiant.” Cas sighed. “I am not certain I am comfortable being those things. For as long as I have existed, I have followed orders. I began to doubt when I saw the circumstances of Jimmy’s fate, I wondered why, but I was afraid. I understand now, that my superiors were… misguided. But I am not certain I am ready to follow a… a…”

“A time-traveling vessel from another universe touched by the magic of a deity older than time?” Claire offered. “Relax, I’m not trying to reform Team Free Will, at least not yet. I’m hoping for maybe more like ‘Team Unfuck the Multiverse.’”

The judgmental woman from two tables over sniffed loudly, and Charlie started laughing, shaking quietly in her seat. 

Cas just looked constipated, a flash of Jimmy’s hopefulness flicking behind his eyes.

“Where do we need to go?”


	9. Chapter 9: The Best-Laid Plans

**Chapter 9: The Best-Laid Plans**

“When I said we needed to go to Baltimore, this wasn’t quite what I had in mind,” Claire said, as the Loyale blinked back into existence on a busy downtown street, seemingly shoving two other cars out of its way to make space for itself in the parallel parking spot.

“Holy crap!” Charlie spluttered. “I think I’m gonna be sick,” she moaned from the back seat of the Loyale.

“My eyes, my eyes, ugh!” Donna protested. “I’m seeing spots, what the fudge was that?”

Charlie giggled, then moaned popping open the rear passenger-side door to puke on the sidewalk.

“If any of that got on the Loyale, you’re cleaning it up, Cas,” Claire said with a sigh, turning in her seat to face the sweater-clad angel.

“Human transportation is inefficient and unreliable. It would have taken far too long—”

“Twelve hours,” Claire protested.

“Far too long to get here, and we could have been discovered, run into interference from the forces working against you. I saw your encounter with DIS in your memories,” Cas said calmly.

“So your solution was to teleport us to Baltimore?” Claire asked incredulously.

“Yeah, dude, warn a girl before you fly like an, er angel,” Charlie said, pulling her door closed as she wiped her mouth on the back of her hand.

“It was efficient. This car will not be noticed, the magic upon it serves to prevent tracking,” Cas said matter-of-factly. 

“Yeah, and a notice-me-not, charm,” Claire began.

“Huh?” Donna asked from the back seat.

“It’s something to do with Harry Potter?” Charlie stage whispered.

“You mean those kids’ books with the lightning bolt on display at Borders?”

“Aargh!” Claire grunted, slamming her hands on the steering wheel. “Sorry,” she said to Charlie and Donna. Then to Cas, “Look, I know the car isn’t going to be noticed, even though we just shoved two other cars out of the way. But did you stop to think the Thule or the Brits or demons or, hell, your fellow angels might be tracking _you_ or tracking angels in flight? You just moved a car and 4 people 800 miles!”

Cas had the decency to look ashamed. “I did not think of that. Jimmy would be most distressed if anything were to happen to you. I have promised him to keep you safe.”

“Me safe? Cas, I appreciate you doing a solid for Jimmy, but of all of us, I am one of the least vulnerable. I have defensive magic. I’m armed with knowledge lots of people’s knowledge, future knowledge, the magic the Thule and the BMOL use doesn’t work on me—so I’m immune to most of DIS’s tech too—I can’t be possessed, I can’t be _located_ by angels, and I have a frigging angel blade. But Sam, the kid we’re here to save? Charlie and Donna, who are with us? They’re not human, well Charlie and Donna are, and Sam’s a frigging target. So please stop thinking with your angel radio programming and communicate before you make choices that affect all of us!” When she finished, she was panting, and Cas looked… embarrassed?

“Whoo hoo!” Charlie cheered, clapping.

“You go girl,” Donna agreed. In the rearview mirror, Donna was still blinking furiously, but she looked a little less pissed-off.

“Sorry,” Cas grumbled.

“Thank you,” Claire said, letting her voice show the genuine acceptance of Cas’s apology. Without waiting for another protest, she turned on the engine, and put the Loyale into reverse, beginning the slow and tedious process of eeking out of the way-too-small parking space Cas had dropped them into.

“We’re in Baltimore, where are we going?” Cas asked.

“Someplace we can regroup and plan so our approach to Sam goes maybe a little better than my first attempt.

~~~

They’d stayed in the Motel 6 on the far side of the city from where she’d stayed last time. It helped avoid too much of a feeling of déjà-vu, but it was still odd. They got two adjoining rooms at street level. Cas and their research stayed in the second room and Claire, Donna, and Charlie shared the first room, with Charlie and Donna sharing the bed farther from the door. It was becoming almost routine now. They could have gotten a cot or roll-away bed (or just used the second bed in Cas’s room), but Claire was pretty sure Donna and Charlie felt safer, more settled the way things were.

They reminded her of sisters.

Now that everyone was caffeinated and Claire was satisfied they had a plan that wasn’t absolutely certainly doomed to failure before it began, they were getting into position. She had people backing her up this time, and Charlie’s digital acumen could not be under-valued. Donna was also helpful—and as it turned out, vital to the plan.

And she had Cas.

But Claire wasn’t entirely sure she could trust Cas. She believed wholeheartedly that he wanted to help her and keep her safe (to make up what he saw as a debt to Jimmy), but between Cas and Jimmy, Cas was the one who was 85 or 90% in control. And while Cas had admitted his doubts about his superiors, he was still, mostly a loyal member of the heavenly host.

As much as he said he believed who she was, as much as she knew he could see (and was unsettled by) Hauhet’s magic flowing within her, there was still a part of him that wasn’t totally sold on the entire multiverse ending if they screwed this up. She could see in the distant glances, the occasional unfocused look in his eye, that he was still in contact with angel radio, and still believed on some level that furthering his Father’s plan was the way to go.

Not that Chuck Shirley had ever really been behind the apocalypse or really wanted to get pulled off. It was, after all, more of a ruse to keep his whiny older children—the angels—appeased and united so they would stop bothering him while he hung out with his preferred younger kids—the humans. Bad parenting. Absolutely. But tell that to an angel who’d never met the guy and didn’t really believe he was still around. 

Which he wasn’t, because in this universe Chuck and Amara were on their magical mystery tour of the cosmos, even though it shouldn’t be possible for that to be the case, the prerequisites all being absent. 

Fucking Thule Society. Fucking British Men of Letters. Super-duper-fucking time travel. 

So, Claire had her doubts. And keeping Cas from going off-script was going to be one more thing to worry about.

After her disastrous attempt to befriend Sam at the library, he’d gone to ground, or _more_ to ground. Thanks to Charlie’s hacking skills and Sam’s similar affinity for lurking on the dark web, Charlie had been able to figure out Sam’s hacker handle based on his activity—there really weren’t that many people into mythology, demonology, wicca, black market holy relics, firearms, and karate, at least not who spent an inordinate amount of time on UseNet government conspiracy lists, stalked DIS, and _also_ began popping up on Egyptian mythology sites shortly after Claire paid her original visit. 

From there, Charlie had back-tracked Sam’s IP address through several proxy servers to a tiny apartment (or closet, it wasn’t really clear) above a boxing gym. 

From the last 48 hours of angel-enhanced surveillance, they knew Sam spent some time in the boxing gym each day, although the time had varied between the two days they’d been there, and left the building once a day to head down to a combination taqueria and convenience store on the corner, where he seemed to get all his food.

Oh the world before everything got delivered at all hours of the day and night. 

The plan was for Charlie to maintain surveillance, including scanning local, state, and federal frequencies to monitor any police or DIS activity, transfer requests, or anything else unusual. Charlie was camped out in a café on the opposite side of the street halfway between the gym and the taqueria. 

Meanwhile Claire and Cas were hanging out in a run-down laundromat next to the café. Claire using her spidey senses to be on the lookout for any Thule or BMOL activity, while Cas focused on demon and angel activity. 

They were all on push-to-talk phones that Charlie had done an awesome job of encrypting, and they were all waiting for Sam to make his appearance.

Donna was waiting around the corner, in the Loyale, ready to spring out and head to the taqueria to bump into Sam.

“Donna, you up for this?” Claire asked, talking into her Nextel (good ol’ Nextel).

“Same as I was the last time you asked. Although if we sit here much longer, I’m gonna have to get out to pee. I knew I shouldn’ta had that second cup of coffee,” Donna replied.

“Sam appears to be exercising in the gym,” Cas offered.

Claire spared him a glance as she slowly folded a t-shirt. It was the third time she’d folded the same t-shirt. She was starting to wish they’d brought more laundry. She nudged Cas who was staring intently out the window, observing the goings on in the gym without the benefit of binoculars. “Hey, try not to look quite so creepy. It’s gonna freak people out.”

Cas looked back at her, then around the laundromat. “There does not appear to be anyone here,” he replied.

“Now, but people could come in at any time,” Claire shot back.

“I’m not so sure about that,” Charlie’s voice came over the phone. “I’ve been poking into the business’s accounts, and I think the reason it’s so run down and there’s no one else there, is it’s a money laundering front for the Russian mob.”

“We’re crashing a Bratva party?” Claire asked, straightening up and looking around. Yes, it was an amateur move, but shit, that had taken her by surprise.”

“Um, signs point to yes?” Charlie answered.

“Okay then, Cas, do the creepy staring thing all you want. Just give me a heads up if you spot anyone with a large number of tattoos heading this way,” Claire answered, going back to folding.

“Uh, guys, how much longer, I really do gotta pee.”

Claire glanced at her watch. 12:15. “Well, the last two days, the latest Sam has left is 1:00 pm. Not that two data points is enough to establish a pattern, but assuming it is, we’ll probably see him head out sometime in the next, 45 minutes.”

“Ugh,” came Donna’s response.

“Um, I’m pretty sure there’s an empty big gulp under the back seat, you could pee in that,” Charlie offered.

“I am not peeing in a cup in a car while I wait to go seduce a boy!” Donna protested.

“We have movement,” Cas murmured.

Charlie and Donna were now having a push-to-talk bitch session, which Claire shut down with a loud throat clearing. The cross talk cut off as quickly as it had started.

“Sam is on the move, headed your way. Donna, you’re up,” Claire said. She watched as Sam, almost at his full adult height, but lanky, despite the amount of physical training he did, Sam still looked small, young, not yet possessing the imposing bulk or gravitas he would have in his 20s or 30s. 

“On it,” came Donna’s reply.

About 30 seconds later, Donna rounded the corner at a stroll. She was wearing a short, plaid skirt and fitted t-shirt. With her hair up in a high ponytail, she almost looked like a cheerleader. She entered the convenience store/taqueria ahead of Sam.

“Remember, Donna, put your phone away and act casual. If you force it he’s going to know something’s up, even if he doesn’t know what.”

The idea was that Donna was a hot, cute, girl about Sam’s age, someone he hadn’t seen before, and who was completely, unequivocally human. Whatever magesight or spidey senses he had developed that let him “see” supernaturals immediately wouldn’t, shouldn’t activate around Donna. She would get him chatting, distract him, hopefully walk out of the store together, and then Cas would teleport him and Donna to Sam’s side where they would convince him to talk, or subdue him, whichever happened first. Claire was equipped with a taser, and Cas had promised he could use his angelic abilities to knock Sam out without killing or permanently harming him.

That was the plan anyway.

No plan ever survived the first engagement. Unfortunately, that axiom was doubly true when it came to hunting and all things supernatural.

“Hey guys,” came Charlie’s voice after a few minutes. “Are you sure Sam’s straight? Because what I’m seeing doesn’t look good.”

Great. That meant Charlie probably had her binoculars out. Well, not binoculars, more like high tech opera glasses she had ‘acquired’ from somewhere that she wouldn’t tell Claire. Well, at least someone with a clue about human interactions and body language had their eye on the situation, because Cas was just standing like a statue. “He’s straighter than his brother and he’s definitely into girls, why?” Claire asked.

“Because Donna looks like she’s being really friendly, but Sam just looks suspicious, and not like scared foster kid who’s been burned a few times and is on the lookout for CPS suspicious, but like scoping the exits super-spy suspicious.”

“Great, so you’re saying he’s going to go Jason Bourne on our ass?”

“What? You mean like the really old TV movie with Richard Chamberlain?” Charlie asked sounding very confused.

“Huh? No like the, Matt Damon, oh god never mind. Hasn’t happened yet. Tell me what you see,” Claire said. Damn time travel. She put the laundry aside and shoved it all into the backpack she had with her. It was nothing that she couldn’t afford to lose, but she’d prefer _not_ to lose it, or leave any more physical evidence than was strictly necessary if she could help it.

“He’s walking towards the door, but he’s looking back at the clerk, now he’s looking all around. He doesn’t seem to be paying much attention to Donna. Even though she is talking and gesticulating and walking quite close to him,” Cas responded.

“He’s scoping things out, checking exits, like he’s expecting someone to jump out at him,” Charlie added.

“Shit,” Claire realized too late, “We have no idea how far his range is. He could be detecting us even now.”

“Um, guys, I think that might not be it. There’s this young-ish looking guy who’s holding like a glowy egg, and I don’t think that’s normal.”

“Glowy egg?” Claire murmured to herself, before the description clicked. “Shit! Cas drop me by the guy with the egg then go to Sam. Do it now!”

For once, Cas didn’t back talk or question, he just acted. The disorientation of being transported by an angel hit her hard, but by the time she’d blinked away the spots, she was across the street, down the block, standing behind a slightly taller than average guy with brown hair and a leather jacket. She didn’t check to see how Cas was doing, she just acted. “Hey,” she said tapping the guy on the shoulder as she sunk into a fighting stance.

Startled, he whirled around, as his right hand came into view, she sprang into action and kicked the hyperbolic pulse generator out of his hand. “That doesn’t work on humans,” she said, not mentioning that it _would_ work on the angel she’d just sent down the street. And well, that was why she didn’t want it around.

“What? Who are?” he said in a distinctly British-influenced Irish accent. He was good though, already regaining his balance even as he took stock of his changed circumstances. 

“Mick?” Claire asked, but she was sure it was him. He was about 20, maybe a hair older, and he looked painfully young. This wasn’t the well-intentioned, holier-than-though extremist who’d tried to kill her just because she’d been bitten by a werewolf. This was the scared, traumatized kid who’d been forced to kill his classmate and best friend to survive Kendricks Academy and went through every moment of his life after that feeling totally unworthy of being alive, wishing he’d let himself die, feeling everything was a fraud.

“How do you know my name?” he asked. There was no heat there, just confusion.

“Who sent you? Dr. Hess?” She asked, sidling towards where the pulse generator had fallen.

“I can’t let you get your hands on—wait, how do you—” he glanced down at her wrist. “You’re that entity the Thule Society encountered!” he exclaimed.

Great, not only was Mick a terrified kid, he was damn excitable. Of course, to her advantage she now knew the BMOL was either communicating with the Thule Society, or had hacked DIS (probably that) knowing it was being run by the Thule. Great intel, just bad news that Mick was not exactly a seasoned professional yet, and that meant he was unpredictable. Which was very, very bad.

“Me? I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, trying to keep him from using his hyperbolic pulse generator!” As she spoke she feinted left and then dove to the right, tucking into a roll before hitting the pavement, and scooping up the pulse generator as she went by. By the time she was back on her feet, she’d tucked it into her jacket pocket and was facing Mick Davies once again.

“Was that? Did you just make a reference to Notting Hill?” Mick replied.

“You’ve seen it?” Claire said. “Finally a reference someone gets.” She shrugged. “My sister Alex has a guilty pleasure check flick addiction and 1999 Julia Roberts was pretty hot,” she added in defense.

Mick just looked more confused, he was still circling, but also seemed distracted. 

Now _that_ concerned Claire, so she dared sneak a glance over her shoulder, shifting to avoid turning her back on Mick. 

“We need to go,” Cas said, as he landed near silently beside her. 

Mick turned towards them.

Claire saw the angel blade sliding down Cas’s sleeve.

“No,” she said, letting her own blade slide into her hand and knocking Cas’s away. “Cas, he’s a victim in this. Give him a chance.”

“I am not a victim!” Mick protested, as he took a stride towards them.

“Shut up!” Claire said, brandishing her taser in her free hand.

Mick backed off immediately, retreating towards the sidewalk.

Claire thought for a moment she’d scared him off, but then she heard the tell-tale flutter of angel wings.

“Cas, what did you do?” she asked, whilring on Cas.

Cas stood his ground. “The boy, Sam Winchester, there is a crack in his mind. He has archangel grace in him. It belongs to Lucifer. It should be impossible. The apocalypse hasn’t happened yet. Lucifer is supposed to be secure in his cage. But the crack in his mind. It’s like a doorway, Lucifer, the prince of lies, has been speaking to him through the crack.”

“I know, Cas,” Claire said, her voice dangerously quiet. “He’s Lucifer’s true vessel. If time had progressed he would have spent a lot of time with Lucifer.”

“But the Lucifer’s influence. The boy isn’t safe. He isn’t human, not even vessel human, he smells. He smells like he has—”

“Demon blood in him? Because he does. He has since he was six months old. Azazel performed the ritual on behalf of Lucifer to set the apocalypse in motion. You know what else? You have Lucifer’s grace in you too, if you look. Because in the future, you—Cas—would have served as his vessel. And it’s a long fucked up story, that if we are very, very lucky, we will never have to repeat. So, I am going to ask again, what did you do?”

“What had to be done to keep you safe,” Cas said, stepping towards Claire to reach for her left wrist.

She stepped back, swiping the angel blade in front of her. “You idiot. Don’t you know the angels just want to turn him over to Ruby anyway—that’s Azazel’s little ex-witch demon acolyte who’s coordinating on the front lines now that Azazel mysteriously died thanks to time being broken and all. They need Sam to be Lucifer’s champion to bring about the apocalypse.” Purple smoke flickered out of the corner of her eye. “And where the angels go, the demons follow. That’s assuming Zacharizh didn’t call them here himself.”

“We need to go,” Cas said again, his voice cold and unfeeling.

“No, you need to get your head on straight. If anything happens to you or to Sam, we are all fucked. This and every universe wiped out of existence, remember!” Claire protested. They were circling now, Claire using her situational awareness to keep track of the increasingly crowded street. 

A shaky breath blew against the back of her neck. “I really need that back,” Mick murmured.

He made a jab towards Claire’s kidney, while trying to reach under her jacket to grab the hyperbolic pulse generator, but Claire was already stepping back, hard, raking the heel of her right boot down Mick’s shin and stomping on his foot. She followed up by slamming her head back into Mick’s nose. She grabbed his arm, dropped her center of gravity, and pushed off with her left leg, popping up her hip as she bent over, sending Mick arcing overhead in a throw.

He had some training at least, he managed to twist in mid air and land half crouched facing her. 

But Claire was already advancing, angel blade in hand, she’d maintained her grip on Mick’s arm with the other, and she stepped around him, kicking out his ankle while twisting his arm behind his back. He lost balance and cried out in pain as Claire crouched behind him, angel blade to his throat. “I know what they made you do at Kendricks. Killing your best friend to survive? They’re the monsters, not you. This doesn’t have to be your fate. I know where this road leads.” As she spoke, she shifted her wrist, jamming the exposed infinity tattoo against Mick’s arm and thinking at it, for lack of a better term. She managed to stay aware of her surroundings this time, as she directed Mick on a path down memory lane, his alternate-self’s memory and hers, starting at his school years and culminating in his death. She made sure he paid close attention to her werewolf bite being cured and his attempt at murdering her. When the memory transference was done, she whispered a spell in his ear, a BMOL spell to put him to sleep. He lost consciousness, and she stood.

On instinct, she flipped her grip on the angel blade still clutched in her left hand and jabbed back, getting a satisfying grunt followed by the thunder-crackling sound of blade meeting angel grace. She turned to find what she expected, Zachariah impaled to the hilt of her blade. “I told you, no apocalypse! Not this time,” she murmured as the dead angel collapsed to the ground charred shadow of his wings forming around him where he fell.

Then Claire was running, Cas dogging her heels.

“We have to get out of here,” he said, sounding a little less sure.

“No, you need to decide whose side you’re on.” 

“The Winchester boy is too far gone. He’s had Lucifer in his head day in day out for five years, tormenting him, spilling him lies—”

“He’s had Lucifer in his head, sharing future memories of a couple millennia spent in the cage, memories that will come true if the angels or the demons get their hands on him.”

“What?” Cas stopped abruptly.

Claire turned back to him, grabbing him by the lapels of the trench coat he was appropriately wearing today, and dragging him out of the way as a BMOL lackey punched another one of Zachariah’s minions with Enochian brass knuckles and sent the angel flying. She pulled Cas behind a nearby dumpster, and took shelter.

But Claire wasn’t ready to answer Cas. Her push-to-talk phone had been quite for too long. “Charlie answer me, do you have eyes on Sam? Donna?”

“Donna ran. She went back to the car, I think, but after she went around the corner I can’t tell where she went,” Claire sounded a little panicky, but was holding up.

“Sam?” Claire asked, poking her head around the far side of the dumpster. “Never mind, I see him.” 

Sam Winchester was standing in front of the taqueria, broken glass from the obviously shattered storefront window scattered around his feet. He was fighting with someone—an angel or a BMOL enforcer, she couldn’t tell for sure—and holding his own. He was a better fighter than he had been in her universe, and used his wiry frame to his advantage. He muttered something and threw some sort of powder at the person who was attacking him, and they staggered back. Free from that conflict, he stood hand out stretched and just stared. Claire wondered what he was doing, when the purple-black smoke began to rise from the mouths of three people standing in the street and one more approaching behind him. A few seconds later, the smoke popped out of existence and four people fell to the street, unconscious.

“Holy shit!” came Charlie’s exclamation through the phone.

Another set of windows shattered somewhere on the street, and Claire dragged Cas further behind the dumpster to dodge flying glass.

Sirens sounded in the distance.

“Charlie, any clue who that is?”

“I—I didn’t do anything. I mean I called in a tip to the CPS hotline, but that—” Charlie was babbling.

“Um, that was me,” Donna’s voice came over the phone at last.

“Donna?” Claire asked, “you okay?” As she spoke, she popped up, and jabbed the angel blade around the corner, catching another angel trying to sneak up on them. She spared a moment’s regret for the vessel, and ducked back behind the dumpster.

“Yeah, I just had to move the car. Since you told me I became a sheriff in the future, I’ve been totally geeking out on police procedure, so I figured I’d better get the Loyale outside the standard cordon so we wouldn’t be stuck. Then I called 911 and jogged back here.”

“You called 911?” Claire asked incredulously.

“Oh my god, that’s brilliant!” Charlie exclaimed. There was a pause. “Yup, it’s confirmed the approaching sirens are all Baltimore PD. Not DIS or any other TLA—that’s three letter—”

“We know,” Claire shot back.

“Yeah, well, I figured, if the Thule are running DIS and they want Sam, better to get Sam in the hands of the local cops. ‘Cause he’s a runaway and he’s got at least a half-dozen outstanding warrants.”

“Nine, nine warrants in this county alone,” Charlie offered.

“Right,” Donna continued. “So they’ll send him to juvie, maybe—”

“Hold him in a psych facility,” Claire finished.

“You betcha. So, it gets him, well not safe, but not in anyone bad’s hands, at least for a little while, while the locals and the DIS get into um, a measuring contest,” Donna said.

Claire could swear she heard Charlie laughing over the phone. “Good call, Donna,” she said with appreciation. “But we gotta get out of here. 

“How are we going to do that?” Charlie asked. “I’ve got my gear packed up, and I’m hiding under the diner table, but it’s like something out of Warcraft out there.”

“Just gimme a second,” Claire answered, as she turned back to Cas and grabbed his wrist.

She’d angled her hand, so Cas’s skin was in contact with the tattoo. This time, she didn’t hold back, she threw everything she had into it, not trying to convince Cas she was telling the truth, but to show him _why._ The tattoo glowed bright blue, and seemed to flow around her wrist, an endless ribbon. She saw what Cas saw, his feelings for Dean, why he believed in Dean and Sam, why he sacrificed himself for them again and again. His failures. His mistakes. His grief and regret. Why he said “no” to Heaven and chose free will. Taking on the worst of the insanity from Sam’s memories of Lucifer’s cage. He saw Claire as the her Cas saw her. Saw them together with Dean. Saw himself posing as Jimmy. Comforting her. Fighting side-by-side. As the images flashed by, Claire could feel Cas’s realization and regret. His determination as he realized his mistake. 

“What have I done?” he asked. 

Claire broke the connection, but Cas was still shaking. His eyes kept flashing blue, and for a moment, she wasn’t sure if he’d come out of it. A few seconds later, he focused, his eyes wet with tears.

“Nothing that can’t be undone, but only if you help us get out of here right now.”

He nodded. “I promised Jimmy, and your mission, I understand now.” Without saying another word, he turned and lashed out with his angel blade, stabbing another angel that was sneaking up on them.

Claire stood. “They’ll be coming after you now. The farm in New York, where Dean is, did you see it?”

“Yes,” he answered. “But it’s warded.”

“But I set the warding, with the help of Dean and his friends. If you’re true to him, dedicated to our mission, you’ll find sanctuary there.” She shuddered. “I can’t say it will be pleasant; I mean, I’m pretty sure the sigils will still make it pretty damn uncomfortable, but if you identify yourself, and tell him Claire sent you, I think you’ll be safe.”

“What will you do about Sam?” he asked, having the decency to look guilty.

“We’ll come get him again, from wherever they lock him up. We’ll keep him out of enemy hands,” Claire answered with steely resolve. “Now, go. I’m about to use this pulse generator to blast every angel and demon in a two block radius, and I don’t want you anywhere near here when it goes off.”

Cas squeezed her hand, nodded, and flew away.

Daring another peek around the dumpster, Claire let loose with an offensive strength amplifying spell, and blasted the dumpster across the street, sending angels, demons, and BMOL agents flying. She ran behind it, staying low and dodging spell fire from some of the more determined Brits. Damn. She was pretty sure the BMOL had better more, well, magic-y magic in this universe than they did in her own. She wondered, absently, if they had poor Rowena or some other true witch locked up and dissected picking his or her brain for ideas. That would be a mess they could clean up _after_ saving the multiverse.

When she was across the street, she swung her angel blade, scaring a couple of feathered enemies out of the way, and dove through the door to the Café. She turned to her left, and sure enough, there was Charlie, bags packed, huddled under the table. “Come on,” she said, beckoning Charlie towards her. 

Cautiously, Charlie darted out in a crouch and came to Claire’s side. 

Claire pushed the button on her Nextel again. “Donna, where are you?”

“Two blocks away, uh north around the corner, far side of the street, by the barbershop and the pawn shop,” came the reply.

“We’re coming to you,” Claire answered then turned to Charlie. “When I say run, you run, and you don’t stop until you find Donna. When you find Donna, you both run to the Loyale.” She reached not the pocket of her jeans and pulled out the keys, tossed them to Charlie. “Here, get it started, and drive towards the pawn shop, or as close to the perimeter as you can get, without crossing it. The cops will have trouble noticing the car. I’ll be right behind you.”

Charlie looked at her, words seeming to jam up in her throat. She was twitching, almost vibrating. 

Damn! Clarie realized she’d only known this Charlie for a little over a month, but already, it was like leaving her sisters all over again. She shut down that train of thought.

Charlie finally broke out of her hesitance, reached up, and kissed Clarie’s cheek. “For luck,” she said, and the twinkle in her eye let Claire know it was indeed a _Star Wars_ quote.

Claire nodded, then stepped towards the door, reaching into her pocket to pull out the hyperbolic pulse generator. She manipulated the field settings without looking at it, knowing when it felt _right_. “Get ready to run,” she said over her shoulder.

She stepped out into the street and held the glowing egg high. “Some of you know what this does,” she said, projecting her voice. “The rest of you, are about to find out. And Sam, next time I come for you, remember I’m the person trying to get you away from all these assholes and back to Dean.” She waited two heartbeats, then shouted over her shoulder at Charlie and screamed, “Run!” Turning back to the waiting supernatural masses, she said, “ _Princeps Inferni_ ,” and all hell broke loose.

There was a way to tune a hyperbolic pulse generator so it acted like a, well, anti-demon and anti-angel bomb. That was the setting she had dialed in before saying the invocation to turn it on. A blinding white light shone from the egg, seeming to hover like a small sun in the middle of the street collecting power, before blasting out in all directions. The force of the blast knocked Claire off her feet and sent her flying backwards through the open doorway of the café. She stopped only when she slammed against the hostess counter, slamming her head against the wood laminate as she landed. Before her, the white light was still hovering, blanketing the street in an unnatural brightness as the collective dispelled angelic grace and demonic smoke circled and coalesced into pools of shimmering white and crackling black when the angelic and demonic energy had left the vessels and hosts, the collected pools, streamed away, far, far away. The humans, or human-adjacent magic users, were all knocked down in the street, having been thrown by the physical force of the blast. Even Sam had been knocked off his feet, and was sitting, stunned, in a pile of broken glass on the curb near the taqueria.

Without waiting another moment, Claire tucked the generator back in her jacket and ran out the back, through the kitchen, and into the alley behind. When she got outside, she thought for a split second the jig was up, because there was a uniformed police officer there, gun drawn. The woman turned around to face Claire, but upon seeing an injured-looking young woman with no obvious weapons (her angel blade being tucked back in its holster), the cop just waved her by, directing her down to the end of the alley, where another cop directed her out towards the perimeter. Once she was out of sight of the of the gathered police, who were all approaching the street cautiously, Claire ran. She ran away due west, only circling back towards the north when she was sure she was clear. As she spiraled in, she realized the perimeter was set too far out, and there was no way she was getting back to the pawn shop or barber shop where she’d sent Charlie. She just hoped Charlie and Donna had gotten to the Loyale and were safe. 

As she was panting, rounding a corner and looking for a good place to pull out her phone and risk an actual call, she heard a car beep behind her. Looking over her shoulder, she saw the Loyale, Charlie in the driver’s seat, Donna sitting in the back. She rolled her eyes, looked both ways, and jogged across the street.

“You’re driving?” She asked Charlie.

“You gave me the keys,” Charlie said, sounding very smug. “And I’m a great driver.”

“You’re also fifteen,” Claire pointed out, “and this place is crawling with cops not to mention…” A siren sounded, doppler shifting towards then, and then away as the distinctive DIS logo approached, and screeched to a halt. “Well, them,” Claire finished.

Charlie was already putting the Loyale in reverse and driving at a very respectable speed in the opposite direction. “I know, but I’ve got at least two truly excellent fake IDs that say I’m seventeen, so I’m not that worried. Besides…”

At that moment, Donna said, “Oof-ta.”

“Donna’s still processing.” Charlie explained. “Where did you send Cas, by the way?”

“To Dean, once he realized his once and future, one true love, and the damn dirty lies the angels have been telling him, he came to his senses and went in search of his pet human.” Claire laughed. “Oh god, I can’t believe I just said that.”

“Word,” Charlie answered. “Okay, where to?”

“Back to the motel if we can figure out how to get there. And then we get on the road towards Sioux Falls. We’re really on the clock now,” Claire answered.

Claire couldn’t help wondering, how long would they have, before a possessed guard got to Sam, or the BMOL slipped in some sort of magic bomb, or the Thule in their DIS guise, went in, froze the place, and took Sam out, leaving the whole world none the wiser. Did they even have time to bring in Bobby and Jody? But if they didn’t, then how could Claire rescue Sam?


	10. Chapter 10: Fear and Loathing in South Dakota

**Chapter 10: Fear and Loathing in South Dakota**

“You’ve got to go meet her,” Donna said the morning of their third day in Sioux Falls. 

Silence echoed in the motel room. The aborted squeak of Charlie’s chair against the worn linoleum floor of the kitchenette was the only sound. 

Claire froze. Trust Donna to be Donna. Even in a different universe, as a 19-year-old kid with a different tragic backstory, she still knew how to cut right to the heart of the matter without beating around the bush. Claire breathed. In… out… Breathed again. The gut punch of terror at facing Jody sprung up as it always did, but it was just there. Fear. Regret. Loss. It hurt, but thinking about it no longer sent Claire spiraling into flashbacks of the last moments on her world. She knew she could see Jody’s battered and broken body again if she closed her eyes. But she didn’t want to see it. Didn’t want to remember her mother that way; just the same as she didn’t want to remember her birth mother as the strung-out, abused, half-broken shell she’d been before her death; just the same as she didn’t remember the last time her dad had been _Jimmy_ and not Cas. She didn’t want to remember them that way, so she didn’t. She hadn’t made peace with Jody’s death, but she was getting there.

And like it or not, Jody was one of the keys to resynching the universe with the rest of space time. If she wanted to save the world, all the worlds—save her sisters—she had to beard the lioness in her den.

Or talk to Jody. Same thing.

“I know,” Claire said at last.

Time had screeched to a halt and now it sped up again, the world catching up now that the tension of anticipation had dissipated. Donna sat down on one of the beds with an awkward “thump” while Charlie let out an audible breath.

“Thank god,” Charlie muttered in the background.

“Wow, we were starting to think the whole plan might be sunk because well, you know. It’s weird that your mom is like less than years older than you, and I’m just gonna be quiet now,” Donna said.

“I,” Claire started to protest, but she cut herself off. Of course, they had thought that. And shit, she was supposed to be taking care of Donna and Charlie. How was she setting a good example, if she left them wondering whether she’d let her own baggage get in the way of saving the world. “I know I’ve been dragging my feet, but saving this world, saving everything, I haven’t lost sight of how important that is. And yes, it means having a chance to save my sisters too, but I care about you guys. If I’d wanted to spin off into nothingness and cease to be, I would have taken that option when it was on the table. I wouldn’t have come all this way, met you, only to give up. I just, I needed time to come to terms with it, because yeah, it’s weird. And it’s probably going to hurt. More than it already does. And because Jody’s a sheriff’s deputy, she’s kind of a make-or-break kind of deal. Even without her being necessary to saving the multiverse, there’s the matter of her being a sheriff’s deputy. If she’s on our side, she could be an invaluable ally—help us avoid DIS, figure out ways around the Thule Society and the British Men of Letters, help us get to Sam Winchester, even maybe help give you guys some security.”

“But if she’s not on our side,” Charlie offered, “If she doesn’t trust you?”

“Then that could be really bad. I don’t want to put you in danger, Charlie, but she could charge me with kidnapping or contributing to the delinquency of a minor, or even harboring a fugitive. She could call DIS on you or one of the other agencies. And Donna, if she doesn’t believe me, she could blame you—for what the vampires did.”

“We know,” Donna said. “But there’s no way around this. So, you’re just going to have to do your best. And we’re gonna be prepped to make a run for it If we have to.”

~~~

So, Jody was a sheriff’s deputy in Sioux Falls. But she wasn’t married yet and didn’t have a kid. She’d never been hunting, and she certainly had never dated nor mourned Asa Fox. She was also older than Claire, but only by about 6 or 7 years.

Claire wasn’t sure what she was expecting, but the neat little two-bedroom cottage on a tiny plot of land that had been subdivided off last time one of the big farms had gone into foreclosure, wasn’t it. The house was a white clapboard cottage with a white picket fence, and a grass front yard that gave way on the side to a wild-looking garden. It was so, mundane, normal. Claire wasn’t sure her mind would ever get over the dissonance.

Around noon on the third day in Sioux Falls, Claire opened the gate and walked up the small flagstone passageway, and, finding no good alternative, raised her hand to knock. The banging of the door knocker breaking the slightly muggy silence of the day.

After a few moments, Claire heard footsteps, almost, but not quite jogging towards the door. The steps came closer and the door swung back revealing a youthful Jody Mills in turn-of-the-century _yoga_ clothes? She looked like Jody, only younger, really young, with her gray-free medium brown hair longer than shoulder length and pulled back into a slightly fuzzy ponytail high at the back of her head.

“Can I help you?” Jody asked.

“Jody Mills?” Claire asked, realizing at the last moment that she wasn’t sure if _Mills_ was Jody’s maiden or married name.

“That’s me,” Jody answered, looking a little bewildered.

There were a million different things Claire could say. Different tangents, paths and tricks she could use to break the news, ease Jody into it.

“My name is Claire Novak. I know—I know that you’ve sensed something was wrong. For a little over five years now, you’ve been able to tell something just isn’t quite right, and some of the information coming out of DIS, I know you don’t believe it. But I know the truth, or most of it, and I can help you understand, but first I need you to help me. See, I’m from your future, only from a different world than this one. I was sent here by a very powerful goddess to save everyone. But I can’t do it without you,” she held out her wrist. “Right now, you think I’m crazy, and I’m full of shit. But touch the tattoo on my wrist, and you’ll see I’m telling the truth.”

Jody looked at her like she was crazy, but her hand was moving inexorably towards the swirling tattoo on Claire’s wrist. She touched it, and the world whited out around them.

~~~

_This_ Jody hadn’t had most of the truly formative experiences that made her who she was, she hadn’t lost a kid or a husband, and despite all the supernatural crap, she wasn’t a believer. Naturally, this meant total failure of Claire’s original plan of having Jody, as a sheriff’s deputy from South Dakota, intercede in a terrorism case in Maryland, on behalf of the town drunk, Bobby Singer. The story was he was the suspect’s “uncle,” who had lost track of his “nephew” after the boy’s father died. Plan B had been the truth, and then collecting Bobby.

Jody went along with showing up with Claire to talk to Bobby, but as soon as the introductions were made, she split, going back to her house with box full of hunting journals in tow. No matter what she’d seen in Claire’s memories, she wasn’t entirely on board.

Bobby had really not been doing well with the paranoia or drinking since John’s death five years ago, and he had no idea what happened to Dean or Sam. They had all vanished right around the same time supernatural omens started popping up left and right and completely nonsensical supernatural/magic/technical terrorism started sprouting from every nook and cranny. So, when a sheriff’s deputy and a strange girl showed up on his doorstep spouting off about how angels were real; time travel was real but now didn’t work because the universe was broken; the girl was from the future; Sam and Dean were still alive, but at the center of a four-way supernatural war; and Sam was about to be toast or, er, Nazi necromancer chow… unsurprisingly, Bobby hit Claire with absolutely every test he knew.

Claire passed every test with flying colors. Arm smarting from the three different kinds of blades Bobby had insisted she cut herself with. (No not a revenant, or a skinwalker, or a shapeshifter, thank you.) 

When Bobby was done with the tests Claire pulled out his alternate’s journals. He stared at them.

“Balls.”

Bobby picked up a bottle of Johnny Walker, took a swig, and started on the work of drowning his existential horror.

In the face of Jody’s continuing skepticism and a hungover Bobby, Claire laid out what she knew they were facing, what she thought they might face, and a brief sketch of why they were on a tight clock. She confessed this wasn’t her kind of mission. In Claire’s world, Jody always made the big, coordinated plans, or depending on the circumstances, Sam, Dean, and Cas handled it. Only, in this universe, the only one who might possibly have a clue about battle planning was Cas, and he was still thinking like an angel. Dean was growing into it, but he’d only learned angels were real when Claire told him. It had been only two months, and the learning curve was _steep_.

As for Claire herself, she had a lot of _knowledge_ , but a lot of her _experience_ was second-hand, either from what she had read, or from memories had been downloaded into her. While her instincts had been good so far, two attempts to get Sam had failed spectacularly. She hoped Jody’s and Bobby’s experience would translate into a well-planned rescue mission.

Jody was still hesitant and withdrawn, disappearing into the journals every chance she got. 

Claire could easily imagine what was going through Jody’s head. It was hard to believe what Claire was saying even with the surround-sound backup. Besides, who was this kid with some very shady friends to ask her, a Sioux Fall’s Sheriff’s Deputy, to go around breaking the law?

The pervasive weirdness tore at Claire. Jody was now only seven or so years older than her, and hadn’t gone through many of the formative years that led to their mother-daughter bond. In many ways, Claire was actually the more experienced of the two.

When she’d made her connection to Donna, Claire’s decision had been driven by wanting to preserve Donna’s normal life, then realizing it wasn’t possible. With Jody, it was quickly obvious that there was no choice, but to convince her that her expertise and instincts were indispensable, or the whole gig would be up right then. So, she gave Jody all the journals she asked for, including all of Jody’s hunting journals, J and asked her to please read them. Then Claire left her alone.

A day passed. Claire worked with Bobby on strategy and tried to get him up to speed on angels, the Thule, and the British Men of Letters, while she focused on their big problem: limited angel-appropriate weapons. Cas had his angel blade, she had her angel blade, and they had the hyperbolic pulse generator. That wasn’t much, especially since that last one was such a pain in the ass to use, there wasn’t really a way to set it off quickly, at least not without using it in bomb mode. They could always use warding, of course, and in general exorcisms and salt, but they needed real firepower, especially if the Thule and BMOL showed up.

Bobby groused that this was a bit of an important detail for Claire’s super-deistic benefactor to leave out. Claire realized she needed to admit to her mistake, and she needed to reveal some things about the boys she hadn’t planned to share quite so early. So she admitted to fucking up with Sam (twice). Sam had proved a lot harder to convince or collect than she had anticipated. She had always had a less challenging relationship with Sam than Dean and thought he might respond well to her. So, she thought she’d grab him, go back and fetch Dean, open up the bunker, then round up everyone else.

She hadn’t planned on Sam’s paranoia or hypervigilance, that he’d make her the moment she’d started surveilling him. If she’d had it to do over again, she would have tried to get something from Dean to show to Sam. But she’d been trying not to spook him, and instead came across super-suspiciously. She just hadn’t counted on how much five years of Lucifer mentally torturing him through loophole-abuse would affect his paranoia.

Of course, Bobby is alarmed. He didn’t believe her at first, then wants to know why, if there was a magical bunker somewhere, they weren’t already in it.

Claire laid out the spiel for Bobby. The whole history of Mary and John, why Sam and Dean were angelic and demonic targets to begin with, the bits of the boys’ histories they hadn’t learned yet in this universe—Mary was a Hunter, John was a MOL, but didn’t know it. Of course, getting into that whole subject meant explaining time travel, which in this universe meant talking about collapsed time paradoxes, and eventually, circling back to the MOL bunker. In addition to having all the MOL’s research, weapons, and magic, which should include a fair number of angelic and demonic combat items, she knew one of the various time-ripple shenanigans meant Ruby’s knife was in the bunker, in what would be/would have been eventually Sam’s room. Also, there was likely, a large stash of angel blades. Once, they got to the bunker, they should be okay. Until then, they had Cas’s blade, her blade, the glowy egg, and that was it.

Bobby asked if this is when she explained why this bunker sounded an awful lot like one of the super bad buy organizations that was blowing up middle America and was currently hell-bent on fucking with the Winchesters. She explained the British MOL was a rogue faction, yadda yadda, treat all supernaturals as if they’re evil, pointing out her circumstances as well as Sam’s, and potentially even Dean’s would get them a death sentence. Even without the extra oddities added on to this reality, Sam and Dean were archangel vessels, she was an angel vessel, and Sam was also part demon. The BMOL liked to engage in lots of child murder and in her future, went on a rampage in the U.S., that while it destroyed a lot of monsters, also killed a lot of genuinely innocent supernatural beings, including kids. It destabilized completely nonviolent werewolf packs and others, killed tons of human civilians in the resulting retaliation, and then managed to murder or get killed most of the experienced hunters in North America. And they could expect more of the same here, unless someone—someone being Claire and her friends—reeled them in.

Problem was, as a rogue branch of the same organization to which Sam and Dean were legacies, once they opened the bunker, the BMOL could get in unless Claire figured out a way to keep them out or otherwise ward against their presence. She thought she could do it, but she wasn’t going to try to open the place without Sam and Dean. It was their birthright, after all, and they would likely be necessary for any claim on the bunker and any warding to work.

So, long story short, they needed to find alternative weapons to get Sam out of juvie and then take back the Bunker.

Claire marveled at seeing Bobby’s house in the flesh. The house had still been standing when she’d first met the Winchesters, but by the time she came back into their lives, it had long since been destroyed. She explored it and commented on the large stash of boxes and ornate crates. 

Bobby explained when hunters started dropping like flies in mysterious circumstances five years ago, he started cleaning out, or bidding on their stuff, much like he had with Baby. Now Baby was parked under a carport, and these boxes were from a guy named Daniel Elkins, who had a place in…

Claire rattled off his address. Wide-eyed, she turned and asked Bobby, “How thoroughly did you search Elkins’ place? Did you go through everything he recovered?”

“I got every nook and cranny, even the ones Elkins thought he’d hidden from folks, like his floor safe.,” Bobby went on to explain, aside from pulling a text on vampires—which he’d thought were extinct—until a nest popped up in the next town over, Bobby hadn’t had time to sort through it. Bigger priorities and all, especially with the magically enhanced technoterrorists wreaking havoc all around.

“In this universe, is there a rumor about Elkins having a particular gun?” Claire asked.

“A gun?” Bobby didn’t follow at first. He noted Elkins had a lot of guns, and if she was talking about the Colt, did she actually expect him to believe—

While he was talking, Claire was sifting through boxes as fast as she could, and just when he trailed off, realizing this was the person who had been telling him all kinds of crazy-but-true stuff, Claire pulled out the Colt’s case. “Hah, found it!” she exclaimed.

Bobby said, "You mean that was true?"

"Yeah, and I've got the formula for treating more bullets." She opened the case, looked the gun over. “To be honest the Colt is powerful, but it doesn’t kill _everything_ There are actually a fair number of beings it won't kill, but, thankfully, regular angels, most demons, Nazi Necromancers, and Evil Hogwarts aren’t on the list.”

Which prompted a "huh, from Bobby, and an explanation about Hogwarts being the magical school in the still very-much-in-progress novel series, which Bobby had at least _heard_ of!

Finally, someone at least sort of got her Harry Potter references. Claire felt vindicated.

After the first day, she introduced Bobby to Donna and Charlie and let them loose on his house for more research. At this point, they could plan and plan and plan, but they couldn’t really act until Jody was on board.

And all the while, time was slipping away for Sam.


	11. Chapter 11: The Raid, Part III

**Chapter 11: The Raid, Take Three**

After three days of hearing nothing with Jody, leaving her with stack after stack of precious, irreplaceable journals—including Jody’s, Claire’s, Donna’s, and Sam’s, Jody showed up on Bobby’s porch at five in the morning, her knock brisk and urgent.

It was Claire who opened the door. Claire had moved the girls from the motel to Bobby’s two days ago because it was free and much more defensible. Charlie was fascinated with Bobby’s books, and Donna was thrilled to get in some range time. 

Pulling open the door a crack Claire just stared at Jody. It was still awkward and painful to see her, and after Jody’s less-than-believing reaction the after their first meeting, Claire wasn’t too thrilled for a repeat. But at the same time, she didn’t want to say anything too harsh or snarky. After all, she had just pulled the rug out from under Jody’s life, exposed her to the memories of the death of a husband she hadn’t married yet at the hands of a resurrected son who hadn’t been born. Not to mention, the whole asking her to lie to her boss, break the law, and help them stage a jailbreak, for the purpose of saving the multiverse. 

So Claire held her tongue.

“I’ve got the SUV packed and loaded with everything I could spare, and I’ve taken a six month leave of absence from the sheriff’s department, and when that’s up, we’ll figure out what to do from there,” Jody said, as she climbed the steps and entered Bobby’s living room.

“Christo,” Claire said, half on principle, and half out of seriousness. 

“Huh?” Jody asked, turning to face her. “But there was no sign of a reaction, and she passed under the devil’s trap just fine. 

“Just making sure you weren’t possessed, occupational hazard,” Claire replied, closing the door behind her. 

Jody was looking around Bobby’s living room as if she’d never seen it before, and Claire realized belatedly, she probably _hadn’t_ seen it.

“Huh,” Jody said again, this time surprise in her voice, she turned to Claire, “You know, with Bobby singer, this was not what I was expecting.”

“What were you expecting?”

“More empty liquor bottles, dirty magazines, and guns, less, ‘Masterpiece Theater,’” came Jody’s reply.

Claire led her deeper into the house, towards the basement. “Well Bobby’s stocking his kit from his panic room, and the girls are still sleeping.” She froze at that, calling Donna and Charlie ‘the girls’—it was the sort of thing her Jody would have said about her and Alex and Patience. “So why don’t I show you around?”

“Are we leaving soon? Because the more I did the math, Sam Winchester’s position is completely untenable. They have to know you’ll try again. And while the Thule, is it, trying to play nice inside of DIS, it’s not going to take much time and it’s already been a week.”

“And it will take us another 19 hours to drive there,” Claire agreed. “Now that you’re onboard, we’ll leave as soon as we’re packed, be ready to go by shift change tomorrow morning.”

“I’ve got a pretty good cover story, it’s mostly true,” Jody said at last, as Claire led her down the stairs towards Bobby’s basement. 

Jody explained she’d convinced her boss to set up a meeting between her and Sam Winchester's caseworker in Baltimore. It wasn’t a direct "in" to the detention center where he was being held, but it was an opportunity, a chance for more information, and to create another roadblock and delay for anyone trying to access Sam semi-legally. And the best thing was _they_ would have the law on their side. The story was, one of the constituents in Jody’s territory was a concerned uncle. He had a will and power of attorney that named him the guardian of his nephews. But the boys’ father had died suddenly near the start of the troubles five years ago, and the two boys went missing. The uncle had been searching ever since, and had enlisted the Sheriff's department to help years ago. So far there had been no news until Jody received a tip from a contact last week that someone matching the younger nephew's name and description was booked into juvie. The uncle had asked her to come as an intermediary since the family didn't have a lawyer yet. She would be there there to do some investigating and attempt to verify the boy's identity before his uncle, got his hopes up. If the boy was the missing nephew, Jody hoped to arrange visitation, or possibly see about a transfer of custody to a juvenile facility in South Dakota. After all, the kid had been lost in the system for five years and had family who could be supportive, help him turn his life around.

They all knew it was unlikely this will work. Thanks to the interventions of the various adversaries, Sam was now suspected of terrorism with the Department of Internal Services clamoring to rendition him to one of their facilities, and at seventeen was likely to be tried as an adult. 

In response, Jody would introduce ‘evidence’ to show Sam was being targeted by the real terrorists and would ‘cooperate’ in proving a case against them if given the chance. In this case, the BMOL were being painted as the terrorists, since they were largely responsible for Sam’s incarceration, and they were an easier target than the Thule, given that they weren’t wrapped in a million layers of protective U.S. Government bureaucracy. 

Meanwhile Claire, Bobby, with Cas joining them from New York, would infiltrate the facility and and rescue Sam, while Charlie hacked the system. Everyone, especially Claire was hesitant about using Charlie, but then Charlie started throwing out her various hacking exploits, including the CIA, DIS, NSA, at which point Jody threw her hands over her ears and walked out of the room. 

Then Donna asked about her job, and at first Claire, Bobby, and Jody all objected to her involvement—Claire was still reeling from their last attempt to connect with Sam, which had put Donna in the middle of a four-way standoff between Sam, angels, demons, and the Brits. But she soon relented. After all, Donna _was_ legally an adult, and the British Men of Letters had killed her family to try to get to her. She’d been training day in and day out, and she needed an outlet for all that energy. So, they paired Donna with Charlie, and Claire felt much better about involving both of them.

Bobby asked about reaching out to Dean, but Claire shut that down. 

“Dean’s always been irrational when it comes to Sam. In my universe that meant making world-ending, soul damning, decisions, over and over and over again. This Dean is a mess. He only half believes me that Sam is really alive. And he’s not—we can’t throw that kind of emotional charge on this thing, or it will blow up in our faces, and we’re all dead. World over. Got it?” Claire explained.

She could tell Bobby was still skeptical, but he relented. They would run this mission without Dean.

To be honest, Claire still wasn’t sure how she would convince Dean to leave Sonny's. But maybe, maybe if they could take all the kids with them, or at least the higher risk ones, and set them up in the bunker, that might give Dean the stability he needed while also protecting the kids.

~~~

Twenty-three hours later, they were back in Baltimore in position. Claire had convinced Cas to _drive_ this time, as she was pretty sure the original tip-off last time, was Cas’s decision to fly the Loyale in. And before she let him go anywhere else, they had a long, almost twenty-minute session of Cas just holding onto her tattoo, reviewing memories and impression, working on his knowledge of music and pop culture (up to the correct date, of course), improving his ability to read people, and shoring up his (nonexistent) undercover skills.

They’d come from South Dakota in two vehicles, the Loyale and Jody’s SUV. Bobby was still grumbling about leaving his truck behind, but they needed the Loyale’s special compartments and Jody had already had the SUV packed. For a change of pace, Bobby and Charlie rode with Claire, while Donna rode with Jody. The drivers of each vehicle trading off, with even Charlie taking a shift.

Now Jody was in with Sam’s case worker. Donna and Charlie had infiltrated the server room after posing as a delivery driver and bike messenger, respectively. And Claire was posing as a lawyer. The new suit she’d picked up at TJ Maxx when it opened at 8:30 that morning, wasn’t the best fit or highest quality, but it was good _enough_. 

She hoped.

Bobby was posing as, himself, Sam’s concerned uncle. He would be coming along in case the facility granted him visitation. And Cas, in his old-school trademark suit, tie, and trench, was there as a psychologist, concerned for Sam’s well-being and his competency to stand trial.

This thing, the undercover gig at Juvie with Cas? It was familiar and brought back memories. Of course, Claire had never been trying to break out under the noses of the necromantic Gestapo, but at least this felt a little more in her wheelhouse.

For all the dick measuring and pissing contests that appeared to have been waged between the DIS and the local LEOs, getting in to see Sam was far easier than Claire had thought. According to their escort, it sounded like the DIS’s mandate to _assist_ those affected by the terrorist acts and other troubles was getting in their way. Sam was documented as someone who had been wholly screwed by the supposed terrorist activity and resulting services failures. So, no matter how many crimes or what questioning they might want to do, their _primary mission_ was to ensure a victim like Sam had the resources and support he needed.

Which meant their usual tactics were not flying with the locals, and DIS itself was having some internal messaging problems.

Thanks to Jody and Jody’s boss, Cas, Claire, and Bobby were all on a list of approved visitors, and the facility was aware Claire was there as Sam’s lawyer and would need at least the impression of attorney–client confidentiality. So, they got checked through security and metal detectors quickly. Because of the metal detectors, neither Cas nor Claire had was armed with an angel blade, but there was no warding on the facility, and Cas could pop in and out if needed. 

At a little after ten in the morning, Claire was led through the double gates and into the high security juvenile detention center. There were more bars than plexiglass and security glass here, but it still felt a little friendlier than a jail or prison, if a little more clinical than some of the juvies she’d been in.

She was meeting with Sam in a well-lit room with a single table in the middle, warm yellow walls, security cameras, and one wall made of perforated plexiglass. It was more inviting than a prison consult room.

Cas and Bobby were waiting in a holding area between the outer and inner gates. The idea was that she’d get Sam’s consent and cooperation before his “uncle” and shrink were let back.

When she entered the room, Sam was sitting, decked out in white scrubs, handcuffed hands and feet, with his wrists changed to a big D ring on the top of the table. 

The guard let Claire in, then closed the security door, waiting for the lock to buzz behind her before stepping away and down the hall to give them some privacy.

Sam looked up, started to stand, then scrambled back. “Oh hell, no! Guard,” he shouted.

Claire held up her hand, showing her tattoo on full display. “I know you’re reacting to this, and I’m going to explain what it is. So, sit down and shut up before we both get very, very dead. I have been trying to have a conversation with you, for the last two months, and you keep running away. If we fuck up this meeting, there’s not going to be a next time, because you’ll be dead and the entire multiverse will come to a screeching, grinding end.”

“What?” Sam asked, incredulous. Looking at her. “What are you supposed to be, my lawyer?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not a lawyer,” Sam objected.

“Got that from the cheap suit, or was it that I was posing as a college student the first time you saw me?”

“Both, either?”

“Well like it or not, Sam, I’m here in a semi-legal capacity. Do you know what the charges are against you?”

“No,” he admitted with a defeated sigh. “They were supposed to arraign me a week ago, but there was some kind of turf war a protest about a national security order. The court-appointed attorney I had was a total idiot and didn’t know the arguments to make, and I wound up back here with like a quarter of the charges read on a 10-day involuntary psych hold.”

“Which is why they let me come in with a shrink today,” Claire answered.

“It’s still not legal,” Sam muttered, then flinched. Leaning back and clutching at his temple, or trying too anyway, as the chain on his wrist cuffs was too short to let him reach his head in that position.

“You okay?” Claire asked.

When Sam looked back at her his eyes were glassy, and a trickle of blood was dripping from his nose. “I have chronic migraines, it’s nothing—”

“And by chronic migraines, I assume you mean Lucifer is trying to bludgeon your brain into a bloody pulp and you’re experiencing untold psychological and mental torture,” Claire offered.

“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned Lucifer to me. Are you working for him?”

Claire scoffed at that. “I’m not working for anyone but the ancient Egyptian goddess of eternity and infinity, Hauhet, heard of her? Lucifer, Michael, all their minions, the Brits, DIS, they’re all wanting to take me out. Only they can’t decide if they can stop fighting among themselves long enough to do it.”

Sam still looked skeptical.

“What are you?” he asked again. “Because I know you’re not human.”

“Well, I am very, human adjacent. I was an angel vessel from the line of Ishmael. Then I became a hunter. I was a werewolf, briefly, but lucked out as one of the 10% the cure works for, and then my entire universe ended, and Hauhet gave me an option. Come here, save seven people, save this world, and maybe save all the worlds, except my own. But if I win, I might get to see my sisters again, so there’s that.”

“I can’t tell if you’re faking or not,” Sam admitted. “I can, read most people. It’s not quite telepathy, but you’re like a blank slate, or maybe a vault. Everything just bounces off you.

The lights blinked once, just a flutter, which Claire knew was the first signal. The video was looped. Glancing over her shoulder to make sure the guard was out of range, she leaned over the table. “Take my wrist, touch the tattoo, it’s Hauhet’s mark. You’ll see everything you need to know.”

“We’re not allowed to touch,” Sam protested, “even a fake lawyer like you should know that.”

“Ah, but fake lawyer me has very real hacker friend overriding the security cameras, so take. My. Damn. Wrist,” Claire countered. “Please.”

It took Sam three tries, the first two times he pulled his fingers back at the last minute as if the mark might burn him. Or maybe he was just checking to see if the cameras were actually looping. When he made contact at last, Claire felt an actual jolt as he formed the connection. Sam was _powerful_. The many layers and versions of himself had all meshed together, an unimaginable weight pressing him down, battering him from every side. As Sam could see the stream of memories, she could see into Sam. The cracks in his mind worn thin and bloody. Hallmarks of torture he hadn’t sustained, but yet had. She understood now what Hauhet had meant when she’d confided that this Sam was more like Sam in his thirties after multiple stints in hell and without a soul, he’d lived so much of it.

“Whoa, how—what did the goddess give you? How are you supposed to make this work?”

“Well, when we get to the bunker associated with your father’s lineage, there’s something inside that should guide me towards the solution. To help me on my way, she gave me boons—her mark,” she held up her wrist, “the memories it contains, journals and supplies to ensure I carry with me all the knowledge of my universe, and a vial of archangel grace.”

She watched Sam’s reaction. “Why archangel grace?”

“Because it’s very rare and very hard to come by, and at the very least I know it’s a vital component in opening the rift my sisters are stuck in. So, if I succeed, I’ll need it.”

Sam nodded.

It was Claire’s turn to pose a pointed, uncomfortable question. “You knew about angels before you ran into me, right?”

“Oh yeah, figured those out the day my dad died,” he looked up at Claire, “It was Zacharaiah who delivered the killing blow. I would have tried to avenge him, but the—Lucifer came to me for the first time right then. He was like another person in my head. I could talk with him, interact with him. He could physically touch me, hit me, r—”

Claire squeezed Sam’s fingers. “I know Sam. I know the kinds of things Lucifer did to you. Are you mad I killed Zachariah.”

“No,” Sam said honestly, shaking his head, and for the first time actually seeming like a kid. “I’m just glad he’s gone.”

“Can I ask you another question,” Claire asked, cocking her head to the side. “Do you have trouble knowing if what you’re experiencing is real or not?”

Sam’s face froze at that. He tried to pull away again, and she knew she’d struck a nerve. She figured there had to be a reason he isolated himself so much in the library, lived so alone. It wasn’t just fear of being found.

“It’s better than it used to be. When my dad first died. I guess when time first broke and Lucifer got into my head. I couldn’t tell what was real or not. He would flay me alive, tear out my lungs and let me suffocate. I didn’t know if it was happening to me or not. There were days when I didn’t know if I was alive or dead. On earth or in hell. When I wasn’t sure if I could breathe. A couple times I stopped breathing because I didn’t know I still had lungs. I was hospitalized twice when I was twelve, on a ventilator. I had idiopathic respiratory paralysis and they couldn’t figure it out. That was how I got on DIS’s radar the first time, or at least how they found me. I got diagnosed as schizophrenic, bipolar, antisocial personality disorder. No one could agree. They had me on so many meds even when I could breathe on my own, I couldn’t tell you my own name. And then the Thule came for me. The adrenaline snapped me out of it. Let me run.”

“That’s not in your records,” Claire murmured.

“’Cause the Thule detonated a magical EMP at the hospital I was at in Philadelphia after I ran away. That’s how I wound up in the system in Maryland. The only good thing was the shock of it, kind of fried my brain enough that I started to be able to tell that Lucifer wasn’t really there. He got mad, he got more… abusive to make it harder to ignore him. That’s why I stay away from people now. It’s not that I don’t know what’s real, but that it’s awkward. He stabs me with a hot poker in the brain, I’m gonna react, and most people don’t get it.”

“Thanks Sam,” she thought carefully about what to say next. She was waiting for Charlie’s second signal. So far the duress signal hadn’t gone off, but the all-clear hadn’t either. “I know an angel who’s on our side, and I think, I think he might be able to help you mute some of the pain, close the door a little more.” 

“That the angel that was with you last time?” Sam asked, “’cause he was a real tool.” 

Claire smirked, “He’s getting better.”

At that moment the lights flicked twice. That was the signal.

“Okay, I’m going to go ask the guard to bring in the other people who want to meet with you today. Then, well then things get interesting.”

Sam just looked at her quizzically, but nodded. 

Claire went back to the door and knocked, asked for Bobby and Cas to be let in.

“Uncle Bobby?” Sam asked incredulously as he stood as much as the cuffs would allow him. “Oh my god, you’re alive. I never—I never looked because I was afraid it would draw their attention to you,” he exclaimed.

“It’s good to see you, Sam,” Bobby said, smiling for the first time since Claire had met him in this Universe. He got close to Sam but didn’t hug, eyeing the overhead camera warily.

“It’s out,” Claire said, as she checked back over her shoulder. “And we’re on the clock. Ten minutes from the double blink to get out of here. Cas,” she said to Castiel who was hanging back, “Do you think you could, maybe mute some of Lucifer’s access, give Sam a reprieve at least for a while.”

Sam looked so hopeful it hurt. And Cas approached him slowly, reaching out with his fingers, to touch Sam’s forehead. He had seen what his counterpart had done, felt the changes he made, how he was able to take on some of Sam’s pain and insanity. When he let go of Sam’s forehead, Cas looked exhausted, and Sam actually collapsed into the table’s attached bench. “He hasn’t slept in weeks,” Cas said softly. “I can help him out of here.” With that, Cas, reached out, and tore open Sam’s cuffs, bending to support Sam and bring him back to his feet.

“Know where you’re going?” Bobby asked.

But Claire was already in motion. They had five minutes left. The guard in the hall would be changing, signing in and out at the guard station at the gate. Still within earshot, but with his back turned, it gave them an opportunity to sneak out, and deeper into the detention facility. With Charlie’s override, the door locks had not reengaged when Cas and Bobby came in, so it was just a matter of pushing open the door, gently, slowly, so it didn’t creak, and making sure the Claire kept watch while Bobby and Cas lifted Sam between them, his feet barely brushing the ground as they walked. They rounded the corner, and Claire darted to follow them, letting the door close silently behind her.

When she too had rounded the corner, they picked up the pace. They had to make two rights and a left, to get to the service door that should be locked, but would be left open. The service door normally only opened with a guard’s keycard, but with the locks disengaged, Claire, Sam, Cas, and Bobby slipped inside. Two minutes left. The service hallway was a shortcut between the facility’s central hub and the infirmary. Used by staff during medial emergencies or to save on distance when bringing meds to kids throughout the school day. They followed the door almost too the infirmary, but stopped just before it, popping another service door that led to a housing unit, and then, halfway down, there was an emergency exit for use in fires, floods, and other disasters. Normally it was triple barred and locked, unlocking only during an emergency while any inmates would be escorted by guards. But Charlie’s program had tricked the computer into thinking there was an emergency, but also not sounding the alarm or entering any other lockdown procedures. The were at the door when Claire realized her folly. Sam was wearing bright white scrubs and white slip-on tennis shoes. If he stepped out on the street, he’d look like the escaped juvenile delinquent mental patient that he was. They had 15 seconds. Claire held up her hand, telling them to stop.

“Cas, get your coat on Sam.”

It was challenging. Claire supported Sam bracing herself against the wall, while Cas and Bobby shoved Sam’s limp arms through the sleeves. Done, she nodded, looked at her watch. “Go!” _Five. Four. Three. Two. One._

The door closed behind Claire on “one.” A second later she heard the mechanical locks engage. 

They were in a secluded loading area out of the view of the guard towers on the yard and the main street. Walking swiftly but calmly, Claire led them to the fence, and through a newly clipped gap in the chain link. This wasn’t a secure fence, so it might take a while for the guards to notice the damage. On the other side, there were Charlie and Donna with the Loyale, freshly changed out of their delivery uniforms. 

“Uh, how we gonna fit?” Donna asked. 

“Jody’s supposed to be bringing her SUV around… Now,” Bobby offered, as the rumble of Jody’s engine came around the corner. 

A minute later they had Sam loaded in the back seat of the SUV with Bobby and Jody, while Claire took Cas, Donna, and Charlie in the Loyale. 

They met up with where Cas had left his car, and then all three vehicles began the caravan drive north to Hurleyville.


	12. Chapter 12: The Bunker

**Chapter 12: The Bunker**

Claire knew that since one of their primary adversaries is the BMOL, she would have to be very, very careful about how and when they accessed the bunker. The BMOL could already be there when they arrive, lying in wait to gain access, if they figured out who she was or who the Winchesters were. The BMOL's Intel in the Winchesters was always a but spotty (okay, massively spotty on both the human and supernatural fronts), but these guys had a different past, present, and future; different resources; and different motivations.

Cas transported Dean and Charlie to the bunker and they landed at the bottom of the bunker stairs. They had their directions, they had been briefed on where to go, where the breakers were, and what little information Claire had to give them. Luckily, Charlie had been studying her alternate’s journals. Claire didn’t know how long they would have, but she estimated it wouldn’t be long. As soon as the key was turned in the lock, she believed the BMOL would know. If the team were lucky, and the BMOL were paying attention to Claire, they might not notice. Cas used a sort of notice-me-not ward that Claire researched on the outside of the bunker before they opened it. They hoped this would keep their entry unnoticed, at least at first.

Inside, Charlie marveled that the tech still worked. She pulled out her special encrypted cell phone and checked it. Full signal. How was that possible? They barely got a signal outside. She called Claire and let her know they made it inside. Dean looked over a bookshelf and joked that geeky little Sammy would love these books. The jokes didn’t all land, because the Dean hadn’t known his brother since before he was a teen, and Sam had grown into a literally mentally tortured paranoid, used to closing himself off to survive. But Sam did ask what kinds of books there were, and Dean rattled off a few titles both of them found cool.

Claire had laid out the problem areas of the bunker, the possibility that the BMOL could trigger a manual override from the outside, and other problems. They had brainstormed ways to target anti-angel and anti-demon warding that would not keep Cas out and allow them to target as needed. Charlie and Dean got to work.

Claire arrived first with Donna, followed by Bobby and Sam in Baby, while Jody hung back in her own vehicle. At first, nothing happened. Claire got out, looked around, and after having given a nod, Sam stepped out of Baby. Bobby and Donna remained in their respective cars, while Jody, having exited her vehicle, snuck around to the outside failsafe, and was in the process of marking a sigil series to protect the bunker.

Nothing happened for a while, and Bobby and Donna got out of their cars. There was a sizzling sound and the air seemed to freeze for a moment. Claire screamed for everyone to get down, then threw herself on top of Donna behind he Loyale. The air seemed to pop and explode. Her ears rang. She could feel dampness trickling out of her right ear, down her cheek, and she was sure it was blood. Her hands were scraped, and one of the Loyales rear windows had shattered, throwing glass all over her and Donna. One of Donna’s ears was also bleeding, and she looked a little worse for wear, clearly having abraded her forehead on the pavement.

It was a magic grenade, one of the ones they had encountered the aftereffects of before. Claire felt physically ill, a bit nauseated, and the tattoo on her wrist vibrated and glowed. The grenades gathered and discharged large volumes of excess magic. The idea was they overloaded the synapses of others, particularly the magic users, and negate various spells that could be cast. One thing he had picked up tangentially from the accounts and experiences is the bombs all deal with a specific type of magic. The amount released could make anyone ill, but the effect was significant amplified for any magic user whose inherent magic or used magic was vastly different. Claire realized now this grenade was on a particularly vile frequency, and apparently about 180 from her way of doing things, which hey, she had inherent magic.

Woozy, she stood, looked over at Sam, looking dazed, and realized he was doing no better than she was. Bobby and Donna were scraped up, but okay.

The leader of the BMOL, Dr. Hess, stepped into view, and started lecturing about how they admired Claire for her effort, but the BMOL needed the key so they could reclaim what was rightfully theirs.

Claire said she didn’t have the key. Dr. Hess reports that was unlikely as her scouts observed the key in Claire’s possession when he was in Minnesota, and now she was here. So it must have been the key, and she must have had it, only they couldn’t figure out how, since she wasn’t a MOL legacy. This confirmed Claire’s suspicions that they were behind the vamp attack on Donna.

At this point, Jody was able to signal that she was up and still working on the sigils. Sigils being magic of a very different structure, could have been blocked, or overwhelmed, but the grenade’s effect hadn’t extended that far after all. The BMOL want the bunker and all its bells and whistles. Nuking it, or even temporarily messing with it, or worse, triggering a lockdown response that made it so they couldn’t get in wouldn’t help them or serve their purpose. Figuring this out, Claire opted to stall.

She taunted Dr. Hess, explaining she didn’t have the key and he wasn’t a legacy. More importantly, the key in this universe didn’t exist, since it was lost when Henry Winchester took it to flee Abaddon and tried to use temporal magic to seek out his family, and connected to a point after this universe broke time.

Dr. Hess didn’t know what he was talking about, or so she claimed.

Charlie said, surely she must have wondered why all their spelled stopped working right, why their efforts to retrieve various Hands of God from the past just fizzled out or had crazy consequences. Why the Thule Society started showing up everywhere hounding them, when their records shown the Thule had gone to ground after WWII. Why the BMOL can remember time travel working in their living memory, but now nothing seems to work? Because they broke it. Someone in their ranks thought they were too smart and powerful, and knew better, and could just stop the angels and demons and necromancers and monsters from having their way with the world, so they engineered a final solution of their own, only they didn’t call it that.

They planned a spell network to try to lock down magic on a planetary scale. They tried to shut the gates of hell to key demons from coming back out. They tried to shut the gates of heaven and purgatory too, only they didn't know enough about how that worked. They tried to make it so others couldn't travel in time, but they didn't know the Thule and the American MOL had traveled so many times that there were events that had happened and yet had not happened yet that they were severing cause from effect and crushing the time line. They didn't realize their attempts, if successful, would have trapped the spirits of all who died in the veil, millions if not billions of ghosts, lost spirits stuck in confusion eventually turning to torment because they were trying to prevent reapers from performing their jobs. They didn't realize that the universe would essentially have an allergic reaction or that their efforts would have unintended consequences, giving the Thule access to anachronistic technology throughout history, spurring the angels and demons to speed up their war for the Apocalypse because they had taken away so many necessary tools, yet given them others. They didn't understand how their actions would look like terrorism or spawn magical terrorism causing it to have happened in the past as well as the present and future. They know the spell didn't work, but they don't understand how it didn't work, so they keep trying and all their spells have unintended consequences. But they're too arrogant to stop and too stubborn to seek help from anyone else. They wanted this bunker because they thought it was the key to solving the problem, but they didn't even know what the problem is.

While she was putting the pieces together, she got confirmation from Dean and Cas that the power was back on and the defenses were coming up. Charlie confirmed she was in the computer and started sorting out how to lock out the other branches, and mark everyone not affiliated with this branch as hostile. That could cause problems, like how to mark those outside, and how to bring anyone else here. She couldn’t respond, but Bobby, who was down on the ground, asks if there was a way they can mark themselves, at least temporarily. He and Charlie went back and forth. They figure out a way, if everyone outside could mark themselves with a blood sigil, they could get them across the threshold, but the defenses would lock them out, and it might be pretty bad until they could get marked more permanently.

Claire remembered reading/transferring a memory of Cas marking Dean and Sam’s ribcages with Enochian wards and realized Cas could do the same, fairly quickly, but how could she communicate it to Cas and the others while she was talking to Dr. Hess?

While this was going on, Jody reported she had the ward up, and was marking herself. No one had discovered her yet, so she was going to get a better vantage point and see if she could approach the door.

Unfortunately, Dr. Hess noticed Claire’s distraction and mentioned it didn’t matter if they had the key. Not that she believed Claire because of how she was obviously stalling, but they now knew she was important to what their opponents want, her and Sam Winchester too, who is a legacy. And if she wasn’t mistaken was the boy crouched behind the other car.

At that signal, more BMOL, including Mick stepped out of a concealment spell and attacked from behind, and Dr. Hess unleashed another spell. It didn’t affect Claire, but knocked out everyone else. Claire was now battling five BMOL operatives hand-to-hand, not counting Dr. Hess, and took a lot of hits. She quickly said screw it to operational security and called out for Cas to mark them, like he did in the memories, as soon as they cross the threshold. Mick struck her with the magically enhanced brass knuckles, and Claire saw an opening. She taunted him about how he felt. The BMOL hated getting their hands dirty unless it was making little kids kill each other or executing people they thought had wronged them. They hated hunters and loked down on them and despised them, but they expected hunters to do their dirty work. So how did it feel to Mick to have the BMOL use him like a common hunter, after they turned him into a murderer, and still saw him as expendable street trash.

Claire managed to dispatch the three others, while the were fighting, but Mick is still fighting back. He was shocked. He asked how she knew. Dr. Hess became angry and scolded him for being a foolish child, not worthy of their esteemed organization. They didn’t need Claire if they can her off the board and get Sam, so he should just kill her and be done with it. At this point Claire was bleeding pretty badly with various cuts and bruises. When Mick hesitated, Dr. Hess lashed out again with magic, or tried to, but she was instead frozen, then thrown across the street. The shock was enough for Claire to get the upper hand on Mick and pistol whip him. He fell unconscious and she turned to see Sam up and using his telekinesis. He said he wouldn’t let them kill her after what she’d done for him. He started to apologize for using TK, but she just said thanks, and his powers were his own, and no one could tell him who he was or how to use them. She asked him to help her move and mark an unconscious Donna and Bobby, and he did. They met Jody on the stairs again, she said there were to more, and they wouldn’t be getting up any time soon.

Claire told Cas they were ready, and the door opened from the inside. They hurl themselves across the threshold, and it was like someone flipped a switch. She collapsed.

Claire came to a few minutes later, propped in a chair in the command room, her ribs burning. She admitted she wasn’t sure if the bunker’s defenses would affect her. She was glad they did. She thanked Case and found out the others weren’t up yet. Apparently, her magic resistance extended to being far less susceptible to even targeted defenses. She hurried up and checked on Donna and Jody, then gave Charlie a big hug. She knew she could do it. Charlie was a bit distraught and in disbelief at what she did.

Dean was hovering over Sam and looking conflicted. She said he saved them all. Dean reported Cas said Sam did it with magic, that he had powers. She said yes, because Sam’s part demon, but that didn’t make him a bad person. It certainly didn’t mean he should fear his abilities. She said that kind of fear on Dean’s part and Sam’s uncertainty led to him being manipulated by demons in her world and contributed to the apocalypse. They convinced Sam he needed to depend on demons to use his own powers because they wanted to control him. He needed to accept he is who he is. They were all a little bit freaks, even people like Jody and bobby who are 100$ non-supernatural human, and that was okay. The only way they were going to save the world was if they accept that, accept themselves.

After Sam, Bobby, Donna, and Jody came to—Jody sporting an ice pack for a blow she took to the cheekbone, Dean started asking questions, and Claire shared the full story of who she was and where she came from.

Dean didn’t believe her, but Bobby called him on it, referencing things she knew about Bobby’s father and the trippy experience of reading his own, Dean, and John’s journals. Dean was still uncomfortable and expressed the desire to get back to Sonny and the kids.

Claire said he had to buck up and step up to his rightful place ‘cause the world needed saving. Besides, Sonny and the kids were as safe as they could make them and having Dean stay would only make this worse. He could protect them better by going away. At least they were less of a target, she said, sharing a knowing look with Bobby.

Dean asked her how she knew, and if she was such an expert on saving the world, why didn’t she just do it and leave him alone. She pointed out she wasn’t an expert, she mostly focused on small and local issues. She had been known to hunt the alternate universe evil version of someone, but those were special circumstances, and she usually left the world save to Sam, Dean, and Cas – they were the experts.

Dean continued to argue, and was clearly unsettled by Sam, but also protective of him. Claire noted she would have to take Dean aside later to address his issues. 

Charlie piped up that they had a bigger problem, as it appeared the British Men of Letters outside were leaving, and they might have more visitors.

Donna said, “A siege?” and Claire admitted it wasn’t a problem they had faced before.

Bobby asked why. Claire said sure, the bunker got invaded frequently, but wholesale siege was never an issue. Not everyone knew where it was. For a long time, they had truces with both the Kind of Hell and various angels, and no one wanted to get banished. Plus, Dean and Sam’s reputations preceded them. No one wanted to risk messing with them.

Dean asked which one. She responded both, either, depending on the year.

Besides, it would really suspicious to the general public in her new universe.


	13. Chapter 13: Grace

**Chapter 13: Grace**

As the hours stretched into days, and then one week, two, they did face attacks from the BMOL, but it wasn’t as bad as they had expected. When they were updating the warding scheme, Claire had thrown in some of the sigils and runes Hauhet put on the Loyale. She had come to the conclusion, by process of elimination, these were the symbols that helped conceal the car, make it forgettable, hard to track or remember. By spreading the same patterns around the bunker, it seemed to have the effect of diluting and diverting many of the attacks.  
Which was good, because it meant they could come and go, especially if they left from the garage in the Loyale.

“Bobby had promised to go back to Sioux Falls as soon as the multiverse saving was done to get Baby out of storage. They could give her the same treatment and reunite Dean with his beloved car (still beloved even if she hadn’t belonged to Dean for very long in this universe).

With their basic security taken care of, Claire set about trying to figure out the how and the why of locking the universe back in place. As Hauhet had described it, the entire universe was like an untethered balloon, free floating in a slow, pattern wherever the wind currents took it. The currents moved in predictable ways, and at one point, the universe would sync up with where it _should_ be. The date in that universe would match what the date would have been in the broader multiverse, if the multiverse hadn’t been erased. The impressions of this world would last long enough for one pass. On that pass, they would go to four anchor points, and fix the world back in place. Miss that pass, miss the chance, the universe would continue to free float as the rest of existence blinked out, and entropy took them all to their speedy oblivion.

Both the _how_ , the specific ritual and ingredients, and the where, or _wheres_ , the four points where they would need to set the anchors, were supposed to reveal themselves to Claire once she got access to the bunker.

The _when_ , she would know by the prompting of the tattoo. What had first felt like a distant push, was now feeling like a more and more urgent tug. She couldn’t tell if they had days, weeks or months, but she was confident she needed to solve the how and where as soon as possible.

She put Charlie to work on the computer system, searching the MOL’s electronic databases, with Sam for help when he was feeling up to it. With regular mind-shoring sessions with Cas, Sam was having an easier time of dealing with Lucifer, but he still had disorienting hallucinations about once a week, and the migraines hadn’t quite stopped. When Sam wasn’t up to staring at a computer screen, he helped with the rest of them, going through box after box of paper records, books, translations. Sam’s language skills were invaluable, so whenever he was well enough to read, he was usually translating.

Of course, Sam and Dean were still butting heads. Sam, after half a decade of fending for himself, was very comfortable with what he was. He accepted his demonic side and used telekinesis as easily as breathing (or more easily, in his case.)

But every time Sam floated a book across the room to his outstretched hand, Dean got pissed off. Claire could see it, the tension ratcheting up and ratcheting up, until one of these days he was going to blow. She needed to find a way to talk him down, get himself to accept that they were all—or at least, he, Sam, Cas, and Claire, not your run of the mill people, and that was okay. After all, thanks to the temporal pancaking, Dean had traces of demon _DNA_ for lack of a better term. Even though he would likely never wind up as a demon in this life, there was still a part of him that would have been that, and the would have been was collapsed into a part of his present. 

On the start of their third week in the bunker, Charlie pulled Claire aside and into the computer room. “I think I found the ritual we’re looking for,” Charlie said, but there was something wrong, she seemed apprehensive, not happy.

Claire nodded for her to continue.

“The Men of Letters, one of their researchers knew what the Thule and the BMOL were doing. Saw the potential for their conflicting magic to have cataclysmic effects, and predicted that it could break time, unmoor the universe, pretty much exactly what happened. They left a BGICE—uh, break glass in case of emergency—document that was buried behind several security protocols on the mainframe. Actually, the only way I got it to come up is that I tried searching for the parameters. It triggered the BGICE, and revealed itself. The ritual describes a spell with ingredients and incantations that has to be carried out at four fracture points to anchor the world.”

_Huh,_ that was the same word the angels used to describe the event that broke time.

“The ritual has to be simultaneous, so there needs to be a strong connection between the practitioners, but its recommended that people with magical skill or other supernatural ties NOT be utilized for the event—pure witches, those who have lived in the fae realms, angel vessels and the like,” Charlie continued. “There’s something about, sickness, an absence of magic at the fracture points, so magical beings can act as guardians, but cannot practice the spell itself, and then, there’re the ingredients.” She passed Claire a printed list.

“Salt, holy oil, rosemary, the knuckle bones of a saint, and…”

“Archangel grace,” Claire said aloud.

“The rest of it we have here, even the saintly relics. I think that’s one of those temporal collapse things. But the archangel grace, as far as I know, the only grace we have here is the boon Hauhet gave you,” she pointed at a chain peeking from under the collar of Claire’s t-shirt. “And I know you need that to get your sisters.”

Claire nodded. Bit back tears. _Hold it together._ “Thanks, Charlie,” she said thickly and half-jogged to her room. 

Was this what it had come to? Months of impossible odds, bringing everyone together, shouldering this great purpose of saving the multiverse, only for a Catch-22? To save her sisters, she had to anchor this universe, save the multiverse. But to do that, she needed archangel grace. But if she used the archangel grace, she wouldn’t have it for the spell to free her sisters. But if she didn’t anchor the world, the grace was useless, because she couldn’t open the portal to this realm, and then everyone would die, or cease to bel.

Was Hauhet this cruel? Dangling hope in front of her, jut to snatch it away at the last moment? Was this a test. She had to be willing to sacrifice everything, her last connections to home. The last people who shared a common history, her last pieces of self, in order to save the multiverse? Was _her_ sacrifice the power that would fuel this world, restart reality? Was it a misdirection, something she had to come to on her own realization?

Thoughts and fears swirled through Claire’s mind. She didn’t eat dinner that day, or go back out into the bunker to socialize. It took all she had not to fly apart.

Between one moment and the next, she breathed opened her eyes. Kaia was there, petting her hair, wiping tears out of her eyes.

“It’s not a trick,” Kaia said. “Hauhet gave you everything you need to succeed.”

“What so there’s another vial of archangel grace out there? Is Gabriel gonna drop out of the sky and say ‘hey,’ and give us some of his grace?” Claire demanded.

Kaia’s fingernails scratched her scalp. “Think of it more like, you need to look in places where archangel grace shouldn’t be, but is, because of how the fracture broke time. In other words, the fracture itself made sure you would have the archangel grace on hand to fix what they broke.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Claire protested.

Kaia smiled, leaned over and kissed her, “It will when you remember to have faith. Right now you’re so angry and scared, you’re not thinking. But this is something you have to figure out, because the how will help you figure out the where. It’s all about things not making sense.” 

“I don’t—”

“Shh…” Kaia said, holding a finger to her lips. “Rest now.” 

Kaia kissed her again, and again, deeper and deeper, holding her, until finally the rage and fear left Claire and she relaxed into true sleep.

~~~

The next morning, she still hadn’t solved the clue, but she felt more hopeful than she had in a while.

She also had a pleasant surprise in Cas, who approached her and told her C he sensed the memories she was carrying, people who had lived in the other world who could never come to be or come back if things went right—people like Mary and Jack. Claire tried to tell Cas not to worry it was her burden to carry, and she didn’t want to tell the others, because she didn’t want to hurt them, make them feel a loss of what they could never have or tell them who they should or shouldn’t be.

But Cas didn’t see it like that. He understood why she felt the need to remember everyone, because she was the only one who could. And they deserved to be remembered. But Casas could share the burden, share the memories, the sorrow and joy, if she would share it with him. 

So Claire showed Cas a memory of her time with Hauhet, all of it. Her realization of all the people she would lose, the people who couldn’t be saved, the sacrifices she would make to save the world. When it was done, he squeezed her wrist, thanked her, and smiled.

Claire felt a little lighter and a little less alone.

~~~

The knock on her door jamb drew Claire out of her reflection. She looked up to see Dean leaning against the door frame with a feigned casual air. In that moment he almost looked like himself, the Dean Claire had known since she was 11 years old. Once upon a time she would have fallen for Dean's artifice of nonchalance. That was years ago, though. And she had to wonder if she would have fallen for this Dean's ruse, given how much less practice he'd had.

"So," Dean said, when the silence had drawn on too long. "You get visions of your dead lover when you dream and--she--helps you work out how to solve the little end-of-the world problem?" Dean asked, his voice doing that hollow-husky thing it did when he was particularly disbelieving or uncomfortable and tried to cover for it. 

"She wasn't my l-lover," Claire answered, stumbling over the word in the sudden rush of emotion. She looked away, blinking back tears. She wondered if the wave of guilt and loss would ever get any lighter, any easier to handle. Even now more than two years since she lost Kaia and more than 20 years in the past, the flares of pain and anger hadn't abated and hadn't gotten any easier to predict. 

"Sorry, girlfriend?" Dean asked sounding unsure of himself.

"We hadn't known each other long enough to work that all out," Claire admitted wiping tears from the corner of her eyes before they could fall. She turned back to Dean, met his gaze for a split-second and looked down, focusing on her hands. She wasn't sure she could get through this without crying and it was easier if she could pretend she was talking to a disembodied voice. "I didn't even realize how I felt about her until she had died to save me. It was the first time I fell in love," she shrugged. "We never got to find out how we would have been together."

"So, what, in the future you can just talk about being, g-gay, having a lesbian lover--what, can like people get gay married and stuff?" Dean tried to sound light and teasing, almost scoffing, but his genuine curiosity and desperation came through plain as day.

Claire looked up, met Dean's eye. "Well, some people are still homophobic dicks, but, yeah. People are gay, bi, pan, whatever. It's normal to talk about it. People get married, have kids, serve in the military, run for president with their Twitter-addict husband in tow."

"Yeah right!" Dean said with a sarcastic bark of laughter. It took him a moment to realize Claire wasn't laughing. "You're serious?"

She nodded. 

"That's..." he trailed off. "That must really suck for you being back here," he muttered. "Wait, what's a Twitter?"

Claire laughed this time. "Oh, you'll probably find out in a decade or so, maybe sooner seeing how accelerated the tech is here." She shrugged, "I have to have faith that if we can save the multiverse, then given some more time, the people of this fine universe will eventually get their head out of their collective ass, and we'll get back some of the good things about the future. Until then, well," she shrugged again, "me being not straight is the least interesting thing about me. I've got multiple sets of assholes who all want me dead. The fucking homophobes can take a number and get in line."

"So before, when we were talking at the farm--" this time Dean's voice hitched a little.

Claire couldn't quite suppress the guilt she felt at having taken him away from someplace he was genuinely happy, but she knew that was unavoidable if they wanted Dean to survive, if this or any universe was going to have a future.

"When we were talking," Dean continued, "and you said I liked guys... You knew what you were talking about?"

Claire regarded Dean curiously. "I was talking about what I knew about my universe's Dean, but from what I've seen, it's still true for you."

Noise filtered down the long, empty hallway, and Dean flinched. 

Claire sighed, "Why don't you come in, sit down, close the door." She gestured to the empty spot on her bed.

Dean hesitated, his expression reminding her of a skittish kitten who's been abused. After a moment, he let out a shaky sigh, closed the door, and after several aborted attempts, sat down.

"In my world, from what I saw, you had a lot of sex with women, but you fell in love with men, had relationships with men. I don't know if you slept with them too, you always had a lot of... hangups." 

"So I stayed straight, I resisted... I was goo--" He broke off, eyes going wide. "I didn't mean offense to you if you..." He sighed. "I don't know what to say."

"Well, I wasn't exactly privy to your sex life, and as far as I know you had at least some sex with some guys, but you always had issues about it." She paused and looked up at Dean, wondering, "Was it your dad? You were always trying to please John, right?" Claire realized.

"When I was 15, there was--his name was Blake, and he was tutoring me in geometry. I... We... Dad caught us kissing. I've never seen him so mad. He told Blake to get out, threatened him with a belt. Then he--Dad asked me if I was possessed, threw holy water in my face. Then he said it was unacceptable for a hunter. That kind of perversion was leaving me open to possession, making me weak, was going to get me killed, get Sammy killed, and he was ashamed, and mom..." Dean's voice broke, and when he started talking again, there were tears pouring down his cheeks, "He said Mom would be ashamed of me, and right then he was glad she was dead, because I would have killed her if she'd seen that."

Claire reached out and took both of Dean's hands in hers and squeezed. "Your mom was never ashamed of you. She was an awesome person, and not so close-minded. All she ever wanted was for you to be happy."

"You sound like you knew her," Dean murmured.

Claire froze. "I did," she admitted. "Not super-well, but I did."

"How? I thought you said--"

"She did, she died the same way. That's one of those things where it was the best of a lot of bad options. It's just in my universe, in my timeline, she came back, later on." Claire looked down, blinking back tears. "I didn't want to tell you--"

"Why?" Dean demanded, suddenly angry, and tried to talk his hands back.

She hung in tight and gave Dean's trembling hands another squeeze. "Because it can't happen here, okay? The way time broke, the things that would have had to happen, already happened, but didn't. And even if we managed to resync this universe, it's going to take the universe as it exists at that moment and move forward in time. Everything that already happened, or already broke, can't get undone."

Dena started to protest, but Claire shook her head.

"More time travel wouldn't fix it. The cause and effect are missing. Besides, this is one of those things where the number and scope of horrible things that would have to happen--to the world, to Sam, to you, to everyone else means even if we could we wouldn't want to. There's no guarantee we could make it come out the same way, and considering the alternative was having the sun go out..."

"You're serious," Dean realized sounding somewhat sick.

"Trust me, Dean, there's a lot of things I have to carry around, knowing there's no way to get them back. Then there's a lot of stuff we might be able to get back, but I don't know if we can. And there's a whole bunch of stuff I sincerely hope we can avoid. And there are some things, like the circumstances that brought back your mom, that are already broken and gone, and while it took good with it, it also means there's a bunch of bad--really horribly evil dark stuff--that can't happen either. All I can hope is the balance comes out in the positive when all is said and done. But your mom, Mary loved you. And she's proud of you. She doesn't care if you fall in love with a woman, or a man, or anyone else. She doesn't care if you fuck guys. All she wants is for you to be happy and loved, and find someone you love."

Dean was silent for a few minutes. He sat on her bed, with its hospital corners and blinked back tears, just letting Claire hold his hands. The silence stretched between them until Dean stirred sat up straighter, and squeezed Claire's hands back. "Thank you, for telling me about my mom."

"No problem," Claire murmured.

Dean nodded. Claire got the feeling he was still working through the revelation, trying to figure out what he needed to say, what he needed to ask. After a few false starts, he said, "After Blake, I tried to make dad proud. I had no trouble getting girls, right? And I could enjoy the sex enough, I mean some girls are more adventurous anyway, so it wasn't like I was totally missing..." he blushed.

"I think I get what you mean," Claire reassured him.

"I never really felt anything though, more than in the moment, physical. But I promised myself I would draw the line. I wouldn't disappoint my dad. I wouldn't ever do what I was about to do when he caught us. When there were guys--when there were guys I liked, when I felt something, I ignored it, stuffed it down, tried to find a hot chick to hook up with."

"So you never?" Claire asked.

The bed shook as Dean shuddered, shook his head, then shrugged. "I'd already--blow jobs, hand jobs, before Dad caught me. Before the farm I--there were a few times I turned tricks so I could get food, keep Sammy safe, but never more than that and after Blake, I tried to stop that too."

Realization struck; the pieces clicked into place for Claire. "That's how You got caught stealing food and wound up with Sonny in the first place. You were out of practice and trying to stick within John's rules."

Dean blushed and stiffened, apparently with a mixture of anger and embarrassment. 

"I'm not criticizing, I just never really understood how that happened. You're kind of epic on the cons, charm, and sleight of hand charts."

"It wasn't exactly the proudest moment of my life, and after--especially after we couldn't find my Dad or Sammy, and everything started to go to shit, I was so--angry at myself for fucking up. If I hadn't been a fucking fag--"

Claire flinched at the slur, "Please don't call yourself that," she murmured.

"If I hadn't been doing that, I would have been in practice, and I never would have gotten caught shoplifting, and Dad and Sam would have been fine, and he wouldn't have been ashamed of me. I wouldn't have gotten my father killed and my brother--my brother..." Dean trailed off.

"So, you've sworn of sex with men to try to appease your father's memory?"

Dean nodded.

"Dean, it's not your fault. Loving someone, being in love, having sex with someone isn't bad or wrong. And I'm certainly not someone who's gonna judge you for turning tricks. We all gotta do what we can to survive. But what happened to your dad, that was not your fault. Your being at Sonny's didn't put your dad or Sam in danger. In my world John ditched you at Sonny's and you found peace, success, sports, at least one girl, and some normalcy for the first time. John was fine. Sam was fine. What happened here was a direct result of the angels and demons trying to take advantage of how the Thule and the British Men of Letters fucked everything. That is not on you." She squeezed Dean's hand tighter in her left hand and brought her right hand up to cup his cheek, turning Dean's head until he was looking her in the eye. "If you'd been there, you could have died, and then the entire multiverse would be permanently screwed.

"I'm trying to believe you," he answered, voice breaking. "But for so long, I've been holding onto this, trying to make myself right, straight, worthy--"

"You already are worthy," Claire murmurred.

"In the future, did I ever have any real relationships with girls?"

"One," Claire said, recalling what she'd knew about Lisa from Cas, then corrected herself, "no two," she amended, remembering what she'd read about Cassie.

"And guys?"

"Two," Claire said, confidently counting Cas and Benny in that number, "but the circumstances were really complicated."

"Are any of those--could those still happen?"

"And this is where I draw the line about telling you about your future, because honestly, I don't know, and even if I did, it wouldn't be right to tell you. You're also a different person with different experiences than the Dean I knew, and your future isn't set in stone."

"Thanks," Dean breathed, letting the word hang between them. 

They sat in silence, and Claire released his hands. After a few minutes of letting the information wash over him, Dean cocked his head to the side in seeming contemplation. 

"So, your lost love," he started.

Claire snorted, "Kaia," she amended. 

"Kaia," Dean echoed. "The whole visions in your dreams thing, is that something you got from the goddess or whatever?"

"No," Claire, admitted. "Kaia's been visiting me since before this started."

"How?" Dean asked, incredulous.

"She was a dream walker. I'm not sure how or why that means her ghost or memory could visit me in my dreams, but I never questioned it. She's just had a bit more to say, since I came to your universe."

"Is she--is she someone here, that you could, reunite with some version of her?"

Claire leaned back on the bed on her elbows and sighed. "I don't know. If she is, she's a baby, a little kid, and I'm about 20 years older than her. So, who knows? For now, I don't want to know if she's out there. If she is, and anyone finds out what she means to me, that could get her killed. In 20 years, who the fuck knows. I just... there's some part of me that hopes maybe this version of her, if she exists, can have a longer, happier, less painful life. And in the meantime, if her memory wants to haunt my dreams, I'm not going to say 'no.'"


	14. Chapter 14: The Void at the End of the World

**Chapter 14: The Void at the End of the World**

To days after Claire’s talk with Dean and three days after Kaia gave her the clue, she solved the archangel grace problem.

“I know where we can get the archangel grace!” she announced over breakfast to many confused faces and a relieved looking Charlie.

“Um, what?” Dean asked. “I thought we had archangel grace, one of your boons.”

Charlie spoke, around slurping her cream of wheat. “There’s grace we need for the rift, to rescue Patience and Alex, Claire’s sisters from her world. But we found the spell for the anchoring of _this_ world, and it needs archangel grace, and a _lot_ of it, so, uh things were looking a little grim there for a while.”

“We get the grace from the source of the problem,” Claire said, paraphrasing Kaia’s words.

“I’m still not following,” Dean responded.

“Okay, one of the biggest problems with the fracture,” she said using the angelic word, “is that it collapsed cause and effect. So Dean and Sam, you’ve never time traveled, and the way things have changed you probably never would, but because a version of you in the future, would have, there’s a couple different version of your running around the 70s and the old west. Cause and effect, unlinked. It’s the same thing that’s given Sam so many problems with Lucifer. Sam’s never said ‘yes,’ and he’s never been Lucifer’s vessel, but the cracks in his mind that would have been there in the future are there now.”

Sam was nodding along, following, before his eyes went wide. “Wait, so if Lucifer would have possessed me, he would have left some of his grace behind, so I have archangel grace in me.”

Claire nodded. “And in a future that can’t happen now, Dean would have said ‘yes’ to a different universe’s version of Michael, so he has archangel grace in him. And Cas was also a host to Lucifer for a time, actually a pretty long time, so Cas and Jimmy have archangel grace in them too.”

Cas looked perplexed at this. But tilted his head as if to say he would view the memories later.

Claire nodded.

“The MOL have the equipment here for extracting grace. It’s usually used for tracking and scrying for angels, but here, we can just use the grace for the spell. Between the three of you, we should have enough for the spell. I can’t say it will be pleasant, but I’m just thrilled we’re not facing a Catch-22.”

It took longer to figure out the _where_.

~~~

Since the fracture, there had been a boom in magitechnological proliferation. With the Thule infiltrating government and bending the tech and telecoms industries to their will, all sorts of anachronistic and magically tweaked items were showing up all over.

Some of those items were being used by hunters, supernaturals, and various magic users, while the rest fell into the hands of more mundane criminals.

One of the nastiest items out there was the hybrid magic/EMP grenade. They worked like an EMP and knocked out all electrical systems unless they were hardened or shielded (and sometimes even then they were damaged) while also creating sort of an anti-magic bubble. An exclusion zone. The bubble was thought to be a side-effect of the magical means of generating an EMP rather than an end in an of itself. But, they were damn useful if you wanted to keep magic users or supernaturals out, or just keep them from using magic near the site of your EMP.

Those devices were so popular on the black market, that Claire drove through three blast sites in her first week in the new universe. And despite the supposed magical exclusion effects, she never noticed any of them.

But there was _one_ place she’d been where the effects of the EMP were huge and long lasting, and where she was affected too. It was in a small town an hour west of Pontiac. They drove through it one their way to meet Cas. It made Claire’s arm shake and the tattoo writhe, and she had trouble moving and breathing, queasy. It had lasted throughout the entirety of the city limits, and a good ten miles beyond. The entire way through, Claire had just been sipping air, white knuckling the steering wheel.

The thing was, it didn’t even register at the time. They’d run into DIS a few days before, and Claire was still jumpy. They were going to meet up with Cas. And at that point, Claire wasn’t aware she’d already driven through three of the EMP zones and they hadn’t affected her. At the time, she’d just thought it was her first magical EMP. 

It was only later, when she heard about the others, and how they affected _Cas_ that she got to wondering.

There were 4 EMP locations that were notoriously large. More than five years after the start of the mess and about five years after the EMPS went off, the areas were still affected. Cars could drive through them, but there were an inordinate number of power outages. Substation failures, electrical fires, explosions. Nothing wanted to _stay_ there and stay functioning. And at least one of the four made Claire sick, when other EMP grenades didn’t. And no one could use magic in any of the locations long after the magical side effects of newer EMP sites had long subsided. 

Plus, there was the issue that the _size_ was so large, the magical side effects really didn’t make sense. It was too large an area of exclusion and too large an area of protection. Unless someone needed literally the entire south side of Chicago and miles of surrounding suburbs as an exclusion or protection zone, it didn’t make any sense. 

And that was the key. The one thing people had pieced together was that _one_ of the spells that went wrong and collided went wrong in Chicago, and the blackout was initially thought to be related to that. When EMP blasts started showing up elsewhere, DIS adjusted its stance (unofficially of course), and people in the know thought it was a coincidence.

What if it _wasn’t_? What if those four locations with the big EMP radius and the long-lasting damage and the strange magical effects were the four anchor points of this Universe, the four pieces that had fractured. The locations where the ritual would need to be performed.

One of the four sites was only two hours from Lebanon. So, one day, Claire took the Loyale out of the bunker drove to the outskirts of the EMP zone, and promptly pulled over and threw up. Her wrist was on _fire_! No wonder the Men of Letters warned against magicals performing the spell. But they would need to provide security or support, and that would be painful.

Of course, that was when she realized there were eight of them. Seven to fetch plus her. Four magical—her, Cas, Dean, and Sam. Four not—Charlie, Jody, Donna, and Bobby. And wasn’t that a kick in the pants. Over the past months, she’d started to see Donna and Charlie as younger sisters, much like Patience and Alex. But to do this, she’d have to put them in harms way, and be far from them when the spell was performed, because the three of them couldn’t all be in the same place.

It would be hard on Bobby, Dean, and Sam too. And Cas. Probably Jody was getting attached. But it was the fight to save the multiverse, so they’d just have to do their best, keep their heads, and maybe cross their fingers for some good luck. It was a lot to ask for.

But at least, at long last, she knew the _where_. Now all she had to do was brief the teams and wait for her tattoo to alert her to the right time.

~~~

As the time to complete the ritual dawned, tattoo tugging urgently at her wrist, Claire still struggled with the work before them.

Donna, Jody, Charlie, and Bobby, because they were the only ones could function inside the dead zones. Claire felt a huge emotional stress bubble building around her. Her newly reclaimed family, Donna and Jody, her new little sister Charlie, and Bobby, closest thing the boys had left to family in this ‘verse, and with whom she was starting to form a bond, all of them were most at risk. There was nothing she directly do to protect them.

Claire determined they would team up: one supernatural with one human at each location. The supernatural would guard the most like avenue of attack from the outside. They wouldn’t be able to everyone out, but at least no magic would work inside. She assigned Dean to Charlie. Cosmically it felt right, allowing him an opportunity to save her, even if neither of them were aware of her reasons. Her first instinct was to send Cas with Bobby, but she sent Sam instead. They she went to Cas and told him to watch over Donna, and if anything happened to her, she’d cut out his heart, so to speak. That left her guarding Jody, in a complete reversal of their old relationship.

The question remained of how magic could work inside a no magic zone. Charlie suggested maybe the magic could work when everything was in sync. She also suggested it was not magic that didn’t work there, but maybe magic as we understood it didn’t work there. She brought up the example of “even older magic from before the dawn of time” from the Chronicles of Narnia. She raised the point that she didn’t the misogyny, but still like the story, and went into an appropriate Charlie ramble.

The ingredients had been properly laid out, just like she practiced with everyone, and Donna was struggling to completely focus on the incantation. She could hear Cas fighting, and several times there had been screams and blasts of light over her shoulder. Claire had drilled into her, over and over, the ritual goes on, no matter what. She had to continue, no matter what. She made it all the way through, absolutely certain she did it correctly.

As she looked over her shoulder to find Cas, a piercing flash of light stunned her. As her vision cleared, Cas and his opponent, faces nearly touching. The man put his hand in Cas’ chest and shoved him off his blade. Looking at him, Donna knew it was Jimmy, not Cas. There was a device on the ground, it must have worked some spell. Cas was gone.

His angel blade rolled out of his hand, and Donna picked it up in her left hand. She frowned. The man who stabbed Jimmy smiled and gave her a languid “come hither” motion with his own blade.

“Screw that,” said Donna and drew her pistol. Before her opponent could do more than widen his eyes, she put five bullets in his chest. Then, while he stood there dumbstruck, two through his head. He went down, and stayed down.

Donna ran over to Jimmy and started putting pressure on the wound.

Claire was relieved she had been able to hold the attacks until Jody had completed the ritual. It had gotten tense there at a few points, but she had gotten through it, and once Jody was done she had been a great help in finishing the fight. It looked like they were in the clear.

“Do you feel that?” she asked, turning to look at Jody sharply. Jody gave her a blank look, then shook her head.

“Claire…”

She looked around. She saw no one other than Jody. She heard her name again.

“Claire…” She knew what she was sensing now.

“Cas!” she called out. “What’s happened? Is Jimmy okay?”

“I’ve been cast out, Claire. I believe he’s gravely wounded. I know you have reason to be afraid of this, but if you would consent to be my vessel—”

“Yes!” she said, “let’s go!”

After Cas had joined with her, Claire turned to Jody and told her to take the car and meet them at Donna and Jimmy’s location. With a flapping of wings, Jody was alone.

Claire/Cas arrived to see Donna kneeling over Jimmy.

“Oh, thank heavens! Claire, how did you get here so fast?” Donna’s face was streaked with tears and her hands were soaked with blood.

She pulled Donna away from Jimmy. When the pressure came off, there wasn’t much bleeding, which was actually a bad sign.

Claire started crying. “Dad, it’s me, can you hear me?” 

Jimmy nodded weakly, smiling. 

In her head, Claire started a conversation with Cas. Could he possess Jimmy’s body and heal it, after his soul leaves? Cas wasn’t sure. Claire believed it could work.

“Daddy?” Claire asked softly. “Do you want to stay? Cas can heal you and you can stay. Or you can go and be with Amelia… Mom. And your Claire. I’ll understand either way.”

“… I want... to … go…” Jimmy sighed. “Cas… Yes.”

Claire kissed his cheek and sat there holding his hand. Behind her she could here Donna softly crying.

_He's gone now, Claire_ , Cas spoke in her head. He poured out of her and into Jimmy’s body. The ashen face regained color, and the once fatal wound, visible through a gash in Jimmy’s shirt, closed up. Castiel sat up.

“Thank you, Claire. I don’t know why you did that, but I am in your debt, nonetheless,” he said. 

She wiped at her eyes and took a deep breath before responding.

“I wanted to give Jimmy what my Jimmy, my father, finally brought my parents’ souls peace back in my universe,” she said. “Besides, I’m more used to having Cas around than Jimmy, so I’ll get used to it again. I mourned my father years ago. This way, Jimmy can get peace, and you can continue your work. This was just a nice kind of closure I never got before.”


	15. Chapter 15: The Beginning of the World

**Chapter 15:**

After the ritual, they regrouped and went back to the bunker. It felt weird now, having Cas there without Jimmy. But she knew Jimmy was in heaven, and in this world, had a chance of staying a good place. So in some ways, Claire was more at peace with what had happened then when she'd had Cas around, but also Jimmy, her father, but not. She hoped Jimmy found peace with his wife and baby Claire.

It was Sam who asked, after they'd shaken and wept and eaten and slept, "How do we know if it worked." 

Claire was pretty sure she'd felt _something_ change. The magical exclusion zone had definitely stopped. But did that mean their universe was stuck back in its place, an anchor to pull other worlds back from the brink?

"Well, I guess we find out in 20 years or so, if the world doesn't end?" Dean hedged.

Sam shook his head, "No, the spell could have worked, but the world could still end. If we're not a strong enough anchor, if we're too much like the worlds around us, they could take us out when they all blow up." 

"Well, we could always try the ritual," Donna suggested.

"What ritual?" Jody asked, sounding mostly asleep. She was sprawled on the bunker's command table, head on a jacket, using it as an impromptu bunk. "We just did the ritual."

"She means my ritual," Claire said. "The one to open the rift and get Alex and Patience back," she said calling them by name. "My sisters," was a bigger category now, and Claire didn't want to make Charlie and Donna feel excluded. 

"Do you remember how to do it?" Sam asked, curious.

"It's one of the more prominent memories," Claire admitted. Seven sigils and some archangel grace, sealed with blood. _Oh_ , she realized. "In Patience's vision, it was three people's blood. In the first ritual, we used mine, hers, and Alex's. I was wondering what to do about that, since Patience and Alex are on the other side, and I can't get their blood, but I think it calls for three sisters' blood, and well," she shrugged. "That's you, Charlie, and Donna, if you want it. You're my sisters too."

"Of course," Donna agreed. "I mean, less gross than curing a vampire," she laughed. 

"When do you want to do this?" Charlie asked the agreement obvious from her expression.

"Just give me a minute?" Claire said. 

Claire went to the telescope and asked to be alone. It was going to take a little while for it to sink in. For so long she'd held this out as a pipe dream, the maybe reward, if everything went right. Now she could try. And if it worked, she'd get her Alex and Patience back, and know the multiverse might be okay. If it didn't, well, she lost them, and probably everyone everywhere was lost too. No pressure.

"Hey," Charlie said, approaching her about 15 minutes later. "We can try this another time, if you want."

Claire wiped the tears from her eyes. "No, I'm okay. Let's do this." She took a deep breath. She set out the elements of the spell and began. At the end, she removed the vial of archangel grace from around her neck and added it to the mix. With one more incantation and the addition of their blood, the room shook. 

A rift appear before her, a familiar, glowing deep blue fissure in spacetime crackling with electricity. Nothing happened for a moment. Hesitantly, she started to approach. And then Patience stumbled out with Alex cradled in her arms, still bleeding from her head wound. They looked exactly the same as they did the last time Claire saw them, months ago or decades from now in a different universe.

Patience was totally confused, "Claire, what? Where are we. Why weren't you in the rift?"

Claire was sobbing with relief her hands shaking, tattoo, swirling on her wrist, as she stumbled forward, and hugged Patience. After all this, she never really allowed herself to believe. Donna and Charlie hung back, but she motioned them forward. "Patience, this is Donna, and Charlie," she said meaningfully, watching as realization dawned. 

"And Cas, this world's Cas, is going to heal Alex." 

Cas was already at the archway, just waiting for permission. Patience nodded, and Cas laid his hands on Alex's head. It took long, seconds stretched into a minute, far too long for Claire's comfort.

But then Cas smiled, and Alex was blinking awake. "Cas? But you died, what what happened?"

"I promise to explain everything to you soon. But right now, welcome back," Claire said embracing her sisters, old and new in a hug. And now she had she wanted, but wouldn’t allow herself to dream about. 

Later Claire told Patience and Alex about what happened and she introduced them to Donna and Jody, as well as Charlie, Bobby, and the young version of Sam and Dean. She talked about Hauhet and how bringing them back had proved they had given the multiverse a fighting chance.

As they settled into their new rooms for the night, Claire thought she saw a flicker of blue scales out of the corner of her eye. "Thank you," she murmured in prayer to the goddess. They had another chance, and Claire wouldn't waste it. Not when she had her sisters by her side.

The end.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my wonderful beta, Carlos T. for all his help on this fic and the great ideas, whipping the chapter structure into shape, and great rewrite help for when I realized a couple of my original chapters just did not make sense together. I've tinkered with it after he finished with it, and all remaining errors are my own.
> 
> Thanks also to my awesome artist, killabeez, and to the spn-j2-bigbang mod, Wendy, for another awesome year.
> 
> Warnings: For those familiar with TV Tropes, this story involves the narrow aversion of an “Apocalypse How, Class Z,” and it is only averted by the successful completion of an “Apocalypse How, Class X-5” (in other words, at least one version of every character in Supernatural is 100% completely, permanently, irrevocably dead by the end of this fic), time travel–induced age discrepancies, gruesome graphic violence, teenagers in peril, and a lot of swearing. There are also vague references to offscreen rape and prostitution (not Claire), if you have concerns, please PM me and I can tell you the chapter/section to avoid
> 
> This story assumes that actual Supernatural canon should be about 2 years ahead of the real world, so the “present” would be 2021 rather than 2019 and Claire, born in 1997, would be 23–24 rather than 21–22, and so on and so forth. This assumes a vaguely similar, but somewhat alternate version of Season 14 with a rather catastrophic ending. (I absolutely hate watching Supernatural episode-by-episode, so I usually only watch a few episodes and then binge the entire season at the end, so I developed this fic before I had seen most of Season 14, but while I was spoiled on some of the details.) 
> 
> Character ages and timeline:
> 
> Claire was born 1997, but was still 10 in 1998 when her father became Cas’s host. For that reason, I have set her birthday late in the year, so in May 2021, she would be 23, not 24. 
> 
> She goes back to May 2000. Dean is 21. Sam is turning 17.  
> Jimmy/Cas is just shy of his 28th birthday. Per canon, Jimmy Novak’s birthday, 7/10/1973, is very appropriately a Tuesday (“full of grace”), although not quite appropriate as if the host for the angel of Thursday was born on a Thursday.
> 
> I have not decided on specific birthdays for Jody or Donna, but am operating under the assumption Jody was born in 1970 and would be 30 or soon to turn 30 during the time frame that Claire lands back in 2000. Donna born in 1981, would be 19.  
> Charlie is 15 and has started using the name “Charlie Bradbury” to herself, but has not yet started using it as an alias. That means that when Claire finds her and knows her by that name, it gets Charlie’s attention.
> 
> I have also picked out birth dates for Claire and her wayward sisters. 
> 
> \- By using 11/6/1997 as Claire’s birthday, she was born on a Thursday (hence the title of the story, fitting with the rhyme as being “has far to go,” and being Castiel, the angel of Thursday's daughter, sort of).  
> \- Alex is a little younger than Claire, born early 1998, so I picked 2/22/1998, a Sunday, as her birthday.  
> \- Patience is younger still (born 1999); I am going with 12/3/1999, a Friday for the “loving and giving” angle.  
> \- 5/2/1983, Sam is a Monday (fair of face)  
> \- 1/24/1979, Dean is super-appropriately a Wednesday (i.e., full of woe)
> 
> And finally, last but not least, the playlist:  
> 1\. “One Vision” (Queen)  
> 2\. “Mad World” (Tears for Fears, but specifically the Jasmine Thompson cover)  
> 3\. “Green Light” (Lorde)  
> 4\. “Transcendence” (Lindsey Sterling)  
> 5\. “Shots” (Imagine Dragons)  
> 6\. “Lighthouse” (Patrick Wilson)  
> 7\. “Friction” (Imagine Dragons)  
> 8\. “Elements” (Lindsey Sterling)  
> 9\. “Superposition” (Young the Giant)  
> 10\. “In the Air Tonight” (Phil Collins)
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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